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Classic and Contemporary Poetry


THE YELLOW MIND by AMOS RUSSEL WELLS

First Line: DO YOU SEEK, WHEN YOU TAKE UP YOUR PAPER
Last Line: MAKE THE YELLOW, SENSATIONAL PRESS.
Subject(s): NEWSPAPERS; JOURNALISM; JOURNALISTS;

Do you seek, when you take up your paper,
Some beastly and horrible tale,
Some Saint who has Cut up a Caper,
Some Paragon Landed in Jail?

Are you keen for a serpentine Scandal,
For a briskly salacious Divorce,
For a Preacher who Goes Off the Handle,
A Wife who has cause for Remorse?

Do you look for an Accident bloody,
For the Plague's insidious woe?
For the Crooks who have made it a study
To steal from the high and the low?

For a sweepingly Fierce Conflagration,
An Earthquake that Shatters a Town,
For War's remote Desolation,
For a Storm and a Thousand that Drown?

Do you feel disappointed and cheated
When headings are peacefully tame?
Have the editors then been defeated, --
A newspaper only in name?

Ah, editors mainly are feeders
Of mouths that they measure or guess!
It's the yellow, sensational readers
Make the yellow, sensational press.



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