Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LITERATURE, by WALT MASON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LITERATURE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Most people who have things to sell now
Last Line: Sweat, must take whatever they can get.
Subject(s): Literature; Poetry & Poets; Writing & Writers


MOST people who have things to sell now profit from H. C. of L. The farmer's
butter, eggs and oats bring in the plain and fancy groats. The man who sells us

shoes and boots, the one who deals in all wool suits, the butcher, with his
wholesome meat—all charge the limit, and repeat. But writers, in their
squalid lairs, can't raise the prices of their wares. The poet has to purchase
meat, and leather caskets for his feet, and every hour the prices rise on things

that threadbare singer buys. The prunes that cost ten cents a ton before this
era was begun, now cost him twice as much a pound, and so it goes, the whole
list round. But when he sweats in his abode, and grinds a grand and deathless
ode, he cannot go around and say, "The price of rhyme's gone up today; so many
poets have been slain, where armies rage on Europe's plain, that there's a
dearth of noble rhyme, and so I've raised the price a dime." He cannot put this

scheme across, for art is now a total loss. The men with henfruit, hay or
cheese, may charge such prices as they please, but they who make the muses
sweat, must take whatever they can get.





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