Franklin P Adams: Poesy’s Guerdon

[ Please let me draw another bit of verse from Franklin P Adams and the Tobogganing on Parnassus collection. ]

( *   *   * I do not believe a single modern English
poet is living to-day on the current proceeds of his
verse. — From “Literary Taste and How to Form it,”
by Arnold Bennett.)

What time I pen the Mighty Line
Suffusëd with the spark divine
As who should say: “By George! That’s fine!”

Indignantly do I deny
The words of Arnold Bennett. Why,
Is this not English verse? say I.

And by the proceeds of that verse —
Such as, e.g., these little terc-
Ets — is not filled the family purse?

Do we not live on what I sell,
Sonnet, ballade, and villanelle?

     *   *   *
“We do,” She says, “and none too well.”