American Wits: An Anthology of Light Verse Book

	Introduction
	Corporal	1
	Elegy	1
	Two Men	2
	A Mighty Runner	3
	Miniver Cheevy	3
	Famous Baths and Bathers	5
	Elegy	7
	Philadelphia	7
	Seattle	9
	Everything In Its Place	10
	On the Vanity of Earthly Greatness	11
	The Embarrassing Episode of Little Miss Muffet	12
	The Harmonious Heedlessness of Little Boy Blue	13
	The Wrights' Biplane	16
	In Dives' Dive	16
	In a Poem	16
	The song of mehitabel	17
	Archy at the zoo	20
	from mehitabel's extensive past	22
	Ballade of the under side	24
	Factory Windows Are Always Broken	27
	A Colloquial Reply: To Any Newsboy	27
	Niagara	28
	Kalamazoo	30
	Us Potes	33
	Ballade of Schopenhauer's Philosophy	34
	The Rich Man	35
	To a Thesaurus	35
	"Lines Where Beauty Lingers"	37
	An Immorality	39
	Ancient Music	39
	The Naming of Cats	41
	Macavity: The Mystery Cat	42
	Tannhauser	45
	Carmen	48
	Rigoletto	50
	Pelleas and Melisande	53
	Survey of Literature	56
	An Unusual Combination in Verses of This Character	58
	from The Notebook of a Schnook	61
	from Poems in Praise of Practically Nothing	63
	from Songs about Life and Brighter Things Yet; A Survey of the Entire Earthly Panorama, Animal, Vegetable and Mineral, with Appropriate Comment by the Author, of a Philosophic, Whimsical, Humorous or Poetic Nature - a Truly Remarkable Undertaking	65
	The Sexes	67
	Elegy Written in a Country Coal-Bin	68
	"A Pre-Raphaelite"	69
	Upper family	70
	First Fig	72
	Second Fig	72
	Thusday	72
	Grown-Up	73
	Ozymandias Revisited	74
	Eschatology	74
	We Have Been Here Before	75
	"A joker who haunts Monticello"	76
	Flowers of Rhetoric	76
	Ah, To Be In ...	77
	Portrait of the Artist	79
	Chant for Dark Hours	79
	Unfortunate Coincidence	81
	Comment	81
	Words of Comfort to be Scratched on a Mirror	81
	News Item	81
	Song of One of the Girls	82
	Fighting Words	82
	Inscription for the Ceiling of a Bedroom	83
	Experience	84
	Neigher Bloody Nor Bowed	84
	Bohemia	84
	Story	85
	Frustration	85
	Resume	86
	One Perfect Rose	86
	Ballade at Thirty-Five	87
	Healed	88
	Pour Prendre Conge	89
	Coda	90
	The Danger of Writing Defiant Verse	90
	The Actress	91
	"The way to hump a cow"	92
	Obit on Parnassus	94
	Sportif	96
	History of Education	97
	Convalescence	97
	Week End Bid I	99
	Week End Bid II	99
	Lion	100
	Marble-Top	102
	I Paint What I See	102
	Village Revisited	105
	Old Story	106
	Aphrodite Metropolis (III)	106
	Ballad of the Salvation Army	107
	Death and Transfiguration of Fourteenth Street	108
	Cultural Notes	109
	Dirge	111
	Spring Comes to Murray Hill	113
	Watchman, What of the First First Lady?	114
	Please Pass the Biscuit	115
	The Termite	116
	The Panther	117
	A Beginner's Guide to the Ocean	117
	Kind of an Ode to Duty	118
	No Wonder Our Fathers Died	119
	A Necessary Dirge	121
	The Private Dining Room	122
	What's in a Name? Some Letter I Always Forget	124
	Arthur	125
	The Song of Songs	125
	View from a Suburban Window	128
	Trinity Place	128
	Why, Some of My Best Friends Are Women	129
	Evening Musicale	131
	Blues for a Melodeon	132
	New England Pilgrimage	133
	The Day After Sunday	137
	Mr. Rockefeller's Hat	139
	To Helen	140
	The Princess and the Pea	140
	Ballade of Poetic Material	141
	Under Which Lyre	143
	from Academic Graffiti: "My first name, Wystan"	150
	John Milton	150
	Oscar Wilde	150
	Parable	150
	from Uncoupled Couplets	151
	The Dover Bitch	152
	Handicap	152
	It Never Rains ...	154
	Firmness	154
	From the Grove Press	155
	Down There on a Visit	155
	"From the bathing machine came a din"	156
	"The Proctor buys a pupil ices"	156
	Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams	157
	La Ville de Nice	158
	Above All That?	159
	Neo-Classic	159
	Tomorrows	160
	Japanese Beetles	162
	Said ("J. Alfred Prufrock to")	166
	Said ("Agatha Christie to")	166
	Said ("Dame Edith Evans to")	167
	Said ("J. Edgar Hoover to")	167
	High Renaissance	168
	Working Habits	168
	Boston	169
	On the Antiquity of Warfare	170
	Sources and Acknowledgments	175
	Notes	181
	Index of Poets, Titles, and First Lines	186