Works

I never walk along the street
Because I haven't any feet;
Nor is this strange when I repeat
That I am but a garden beet.

(After Ben King, Dedicated to E. Jesse Conway.)


If I were City Editor
And you should come to my cold desk and choke,
And say, "Old man I'm actually dead broke."
I say, if I were City Editor,...

Ah, somewhere in another world
There is a warmer spot,
Where the fire is burning always.
And always it is hot;
And always fiends are shouting,
And always flames are blue,
And always Satan's asking:...

Far back within an age remote,
Which common history fails to note,
When dogs could talk, and pigs could sing,
And frogs obeyed a wooden king,
There lived a tribe of rats so mean,...

To sit and dream in a shady nook
While the phantom clouds roll by;
To con some long-remembered book
When the pulse of youth beats high.

To thrill when the dying sunset glows...

They were seated there in silence
Each one busy with a frown,
It was midnight in the city,
And the lid was on the town.
They had all been playing poker
'Mid the rattle of the chink,...

In days gone by, when cows could fly
And goblins rode on bears;
When fairies danced upon the green
And giants moped in lairs,
There lived alone upon a shelf
A tinsie, winsie little elf.
...