And I doubt me greatly whether His time he used to pass Writing sonnets, on the grass (I might say something good on pen and sward!) While the cat sat near at hand, Trying hard to understand The poems he occasionally roared. (I myself possess a feline, But when poetry I roar He is sure to make a bee-line For the door.) The poet, cent by cent, All his patrimony spent— (I might tell how he went from verse to worse!) Till the cat was sure she could, By advising, do him good. So addressed him in a manner that was terse: "We are bound toward the scuppers, And the time has come to act, Or we'll both be on our uppers On her boot she fixed her eye, But the boot made no reply (I might say: "Couldn't speak to save its sole!") And the foolish bard, instead Of responding, only read A verse that wasn't bad upon the whole. Though she knew not what it meant, How it went: "If I should live to be The last leaf upon the tree ❞— (I might put in: "I think I'd just as leaf!") "Let them smile, as I do now, At the old forsaken bough " Well, he'd plagiarized it bodily, in brief! Couldn't read the lines between, So she took it to a leading Magazine. She was jarred and very sore When they showed her to the door. (I might hit off the door that was a jar!) To the spot she swift returned Where the poet sighed and yearned, And she told him that he'd gone a little far. "Your performance with this rhyme has Made me absolutely sick," She remarked. "I think the time has I could fill up half the page (I might say that she went a bit too fur!) She answered with a wrathful kind of purr. But I feel my conscience bid Me, as tit for tat, to boot you!" The Moral of the plot (Though I say it, as should not!) But again there're other times Is a rascal, and a bully one to boot! H. H. Knibbs Harry Herbert Knibbs was born at Niagara Falls, October 24, 1874. After a desultory schooling, he attended Harvard for three years when he was thirty-four. "Somebody said I took honors in English," says Knibbs, "but I never saw them." He wrote his first book, Lost Farm Camp, a novel, as exercise. a class Half a dozen volumes followed, Overland Red (1914) and Tang of Life (1917) being the most popular. In 1911, Knibbs settled in Los Angeles, California, where he has lived ever since. In Riders of the Stars (1916) and Songs of the Trail (1920), Knibbs carries on the tradition of Bret Harte and the Pike County Ballads. High-hearted verse this is, with more than an occasional flash of poetry. To the typical Western breeziness, Knibbs adds a wider whimsicality, a rough-shod but nimble imagination. THE VALLEY THAT GOD FORGOT Out in the desert spaces, edged by a hazy blue, They were there, to his frenzied seeming, Davison's face was leather; his mouth was a swollen blot, His mind was a floating feather, in The Valley That God Forgot; Gold! Why his, for the finding! But water was never found, Save in deep caverns winding miles through the under ground: Cool, far, shadowy places Edged by the mirrored trees, And fear let loose his knees. There was Shorty who owed him money, and Billing who bossed the crowd; And Steve whom the boys called "Sunny," and Collins who talked so loud: Miguel with the handsome daughter, Five-and they begged for water, And offered him gold, in pay. Gold? It was never cheaper. And Davison shook his head: "The price of a drink is steeper out here than in town," he said. He laughed as they mouthed and muttered "I'm through with the game!" he cried. "I'm through!" And he knelt and fumbled the cap his dry canteen of Then, rising, he swayed and stumbled into a black ravine: His ghostly comrades followed, For Davison's end was near, And a shallow grave they hollowed, When up from it, cool and clear Bubbled the water-hidden a pick-stroke beneath the Davison, phantom-ridden, scooped with sand; hand. . . a shaking |