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Country Life
The country village life
picturesque and quiet
as an anodyne
for an angry spleen.
I recommend you try it.
The paucity of stress
is salubrious, unless,
you need the hype,
of the urban type,
you’d better change address.
But if you stick and cherish
your position in the parish,
know the vicar,
and his liquour;
Life won’t be so nightmarish.
About the social common green:
make certain that you’re seen
with horse and habit,
dogs chasing rabbit,
and at the pub,
where all convene.
Aspiring to the Manor Born?
taxes are a constant thorn.
pretentions do cost,
your soul is lost,
and you’re looked upon with scorn.
To be gentry you must have a crest
or you can lay your pretentions to rest
it’s really quite vital
to acquire a title
Hereditary, not life, is best.
With your new title you buy an estate
how large is how they equate
you from a lord or a squire,
how many servants that you hire
and the dogs you’ll presumably mate.
Now that you’ve reached you’re fine goal,
and your life is now on a roll,
it does seem to appear,
by this titled veneer,
that you’ve traded your integral soul.
Shakespeare has an arrangement with the Devil
It was just another chilly night
when Hamlet’s aunt, called “Big Lenore”,
was decorating a lower dungeon
in chains and chintz
when something gruesome
made her wince.
It had made audacious inroads
into her Constance Spry,
and seeing that, she let out a cry:
“Out, out damned spot!”
Oops! I quote the wrong production,
that was Lady Macbeth’s induction
to the miseries of murther
I’ll leave it at that and go no further.
“I’ll get that rat, who
chewing my Constance’ silk,
and fry him and all his vermin ilk!”
And with out Much a do and
dreadful calm
she waited, anticipating, when she’d embalm
that artless rodent without compunction.
“He’ll pay for his insensitive rambunction!”
It’s said today she haunts that cell.
They wouldn’t take her down in Hell.
“She plays too rough!”
the devil cried,
“We’d all wear chintz and be Constance Spryed!”
Dorothy Parker’s dream suitor
The one and only perfect limousine,
sent by he,
whisked me off for some haute cuisine by the sea.
The table was set with a single rose,
in a vase
that conveyed romance I suppose
for thought “Did he ignore expense?”
Said he “Let the limousine wait!”
At what cost?
Not so lost;
He told me he got a special rate.
You might not lunch in this town again (or Eaten alive.)
Gathered at the Algonquin’s famed Round Table
where the best wits, as they were able,
traded quips and partook of lunch.
They were a spirited ravenous bunch.
Where the riposte had to be sharp and fast.
If your wit was slow you wouldn’t last.
Mister Wollcott and Mister Benchley
both seen as essentially
the cornerstones of this Literatti
that fed the fire of the gliteratti.
Some times the mood became much darker
with sardonic wit from Ms. Parker.
Scathing and lampooning as they were
You never could be very sure
From their smiles and barbed bon mots
whether you were friend or foe.