To smite Apollo's lyre I am unable; <br />Of loveliness, alas! I cannot sing. <br />My lot it i, across the tavern table, <br />To start a chorus to the strumming string. <br />I have no gift to touch your heart to pity; <br />I have no power to ring the note of pain: <br />All I can do is pipe a pot-house ditty, <br />Or roar a Rabelaisian refrain. <br /> <br />Behold yon minstrel of the empty belly, <br />Who seeks to please the bored and waiting throng, <br />Outside the Opera with ukulele, <br />And raucous strains of syncopated song. <br />His rag-time mocks their eager hearts a-hunger <br />For golden voices, melody divine: <br />Yet . . . throw a penny to the ballad-monger; <br />Yet . . . listen idly to this song of mine. <br /> <br />For with a humble heart I clank rhyme's fetters, <br />And bare my buttocks to the critic knout; <br />A graceless hobo in the Land of Letters, <br />Piping my ditties of the down-and-out. <br />A bar-room bard . . . so if a coin you're flinging, <br />Pay me a pot, and let me dream and booze; <br />To stars of scorn my dour defiance ringing, <br />With battered banjo and a strumpet Muse.<br /><br />Robert William Service<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/prelude-5/
