In Residence

SAPPHO IN CHIC-A-GO 77 Calliope’s call forever closed, Clio, Melpomene, Thiala dead, Ended the stately rhythmus of Una and Oriana, ended the quest of the Holy Graal, Jerusalem a handful of ashes blown by the wind, extinct, The Crusaders’ streams of shadowy midnight troops sped with the sunrise, Amadis, Tancred, utterly gone, Charlemagne, Roland, Oliver gone Palmerin, ogre, departed, vanish’d the turrets that Usk from its waters reflected, Arthur vanish’d with all his knights, Merlin and Lancelot and Galahad, all gone, dissolv’d utterly like an exhalation ; Pass’d ! pass’d! for us, forever pass’d, that once so mighty world, now void inanimate, phantom world Embroider’d, dazzling, foreign world, with all its gorgeous legends, myths, Its kings and castles proud, its priests and warlike lords and courtly dames Pass’d to its charnel vault, coffin’d with crown and armor on, Blazon’d with Shakspere’s purple page, And dirged by Tennyson’s sweet sad rhyme. I say I see, my friends if you do not, the illustrious emigré (having it is true in her day, although the same, changed, journey’d considerable,) Making directly for this rendezvous, vigorously clearing a path for herself, striding through the confusion, By thud of machinery and shrill steam-whistle undismay’d Bluffed not a bit by drain-pipe gasometers, artificial fertilizers, Smiling and pleas’d with palpable intent to stay, She’s here, install’d amid the kitchen ware!” WALT WHITMAN.! The lady proved to be Sappho herself. She proceeded to rival her Ode to Aphrodite with one to a publisher who had met her on the wharf, thinking her to be the normal brand of poetess, as manufactured at Boston. But Sappho justifies her pre-eminence: she replies to his overtures: Would you play me down for a sucker, stranger ? Plank down fifty bucks for a gold brick? No, sir! I should smile! A dern silly proposition. Not on yer tintype! The above astonishing farrago of bombast, bad grammar, and schoolboy blunder is the actual writing of this unpleasant psychopath.