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. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ROBERT FROST RELATES THE DEATH OF THE TIRED MAN by LOUIS UNTERMEYER FOR THE BAPTIST by WILLIAM DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN ANTIQUE JEWELER by FREDERICK HENRY HERBERT ADLER SONNET: 16 by RICHARD BARNFIELD A GARDEN SPOT by PRINGLE BARRET BILL AND THE SUPE (A MINING CAMP BALLAD) by BERTON BRALEY MAN WAS MADE TO MOURN by ROBERT BURNS THREE EPISTLES TO G. LLOYD ON A PASSAGE FROM HOMER'S ILIAD: 2 by JOHN BYROM TO MY BROWNE, YET BRIGHTEST SWAIN / THAT WOONS, OR ... PLAIN by JOHN DAVIES (1565-1618) |