The better part of wisdom lies on me?
The books I read they shrug and lob away
To bury until resurrection’s day.
What calls these friends from literary tomb?
One voice, one love, one night, one lonely room
Where turning pages I with wild desire
Ran forth to snatch their charred book from the fire?
O dear Poe, never exit; Mr. Wilde
Rise up with Dorian to tease this child
To please this boy again with ghastly tale,
And Herman, tag along with comrade Whale.
I would not spurn you forth or turn you out
Or kill that great White thing with cynic’s doubt.
In baggage car waits Dorian, a canvas ghost,
While Wilde at tea bites tongue and lets Shaw boast.
Then Oscar cuts and tosses mot juste
And laughter rings and leaves him in a gust.
The authors bark and yip, their faces shine,
Their vast talk merely beer, while Wilde’s is wine.
At last dear Edgar hems and dares to speak,
His Usher voice is winter lost and weak,
His dark heart drums beneath our carriage floor,
The train’s smoke ravens by with: Nevermore.
We turn to Melville now and seek his Whale,
What’s that? The merest minnow! Drop the sail.
So say the critics, but does Melville hear?
He does and shuns the sea and now his bier.
This midnight train, which rounds the curve ahead,
Its engine ghostly pale, a loom of dread,
Then all’s not lost, for whether land or sea,