From Rude Rural Rhymes by Bob Adams, New York: The Macmillan Company; 1925; pp. 216-217.
ODES TO ORDER
It’s middling hard to earn your ration,
Like Edgar Guest and Walter Mason,
By versifying all creation.
For be they sad or be they gay
They needs must write a rhyme a day,
Must catch the Muse’s streaming hair
And drag her screaming from her lair,
And thus insist that she inspire them
Before their syndicaters fire them
For lying down on gents that hire them.
You know yourself how mad it makes you,
Just after gentle Morpheus takes you,
When friend wife nudges you and wakes you,
To kick poor pussy out of doors
Or do some other household chores.
Just fancy you were Edgar Guest
And thus in soft tones were addressed,
“My dear, I hate to break your rest,
But you must rise and rack your dome,
For you forgot your daily pome.”
O there are times both now and then
When rude rhymes roll right off my pen.
I sit me down and in a jiffy
[217]
I have some verses fresh and spiffy.
But other times I sit and weep
And fain would sell my lyre cheap.
My trains of thought all miss the junction;
My bald old bean is off its function.