THE ARTIST. 
For FRIEDA 
  
  
I 
I know that Earth is false and Hell 
And Heaven to man are deaf and dumb, too. 
I know what last dim oracle 
Every Panurge is bound to come to. 
I find more mental bread and cheese 
In bounty of one brandy bottle 
Than in all books Averrhoes 
Once built about his Aristotle. 
  
II 
The babble of my slut, I swear 
Gives joy and certitudes intenser 
Than all the wit of a Voltaire 
And all the science of a Spencer. 
My poppy-pipe—its shows surpass! 
More and more beautiful and brainier  
Than all the lumps of Pheidias 
And all the daubs of de la Peña. 
  
III 
My music and my verse are mine. 
I know myself and what my task is! 
Be off, ye syncopated swine, 
Wagner, Vitruvius, Velasquez, 
Swift, Shakespeare, Shelley, Socrates, 
Sterne, Blake, Petronius, Canova! 
I’ll make my universe to please 
Myself, like jolly old Jehovah.