"MY husband," sighed the weeping wife, "has made a ruin of my life. He does not seem to yearn or long for Higher Things, like Art and Song. The sordid things to him appeal; he'd rather have a good square meal, than sit with me through dreamful days, reciting Robert Browning's lays. A noble painting on the wall makes no appeal to him at all; with scorn he'll pass the picture by, and say he'd rather have a pie. Because the bread is always hard, because his porterhouse is charred, because the coffee's weak and thin, he'll make a most unseemly din. He can't be made to realize that noble odes beat oyster fries, that Ibsen's pen, surcharged with ink, surpasses sausage in the link, that Handel's grand harmonic burst beats schweitzer cheese or liverwurst. So here I sit upon the floor, and weep and wail forevermore." | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE DIRTY OLD MAN by WILLIAM ALLINGHAM THE BEGGAR'S OPERA: SONG. AIR 16: OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY by JOHN GAY TO A DOG by JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY SONNET: 151 by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE THE PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER |