Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A SONG OF NERVOUS PROSTRATION, by AMOS RUSSEL WELLS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A SONG OF NERVOUS PROSTRATION, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Ah me, for the backaches our fathers enjoyed
Last Line: The lingering nightmare, of nervous prostration.
Subject(s): Life, Modern


Ah me, for the backaches our fathers enjoyed,
Their minds and their bodies serenely employed,
The good honest backaches, dispelled by the cheap
And adequate lotion of good honest sleep!
They hammered the anvil, they tugged at the plough,
They toiled and they moiled in the field and the mow,
They bent to the last, and they swayed to the loom,
And their heavy flails crashed like the crackings of doom;
And then, as they pounded and pummelled away,
There came, as the climax and crown of the day,
The witness of work and the promise of rest, --
An ache in the back and a peace in the breast.
But now, in this harrying, hurrying nation,
The crown of our labor is -- nervous prostration.

We turn out ten shoes where our fathers made one,
Our books come to finis ere theirs had begun,
We hurry to work and we hurry to play,
We live in to-morrow instead of to-day,
Our letters are written as fast as we talk,
We fly with our motors, disdaining to walk.
Full well may we liken our life to a race,
With eight men contending for every man's place,
Stung on by the lash of a shadowy need,
The whip of ambition, the beckon of greed.
No wonder men savagely long for a few
Of the good honest backaches our forefathers knew
When mankind was spared the supreme desperation,
The choking mad nightmare, of nervous prostration.

Our work is a fog-bank; our play is a bore;
Despondency lurks by the side of our door.
The present is darkness, the future is dead,
And fears are the food upon which we are fed;
There's nothing of brightness on land or on sea.
So weary and dreary and troubled are we.
Then ho! for the backaches our fathers enjoyed,
Head calm in its thinking, hands sanely employed;
Those good honest backaches, dispelled by the cheap
And adequate lotion of good honest sleep!
We'll gladly gain less, may we only "go slow,"
And that sleep -- and that backache -- in poverty know,
Relieved of the horror and dull desperation,
The lingering nightmare, of nervous prostration.





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