THE PROPERLY SCHOLARLY ATTITUDE
The poet pursues his beautiful theme;
The preacher his golden beatitude;
And I run after a vanishing dream --
The glittering, will-o’-the-wispish gleam
Of the properly scholarly attitude --
The highly desirable, the very advisable,
The hardly acquirable, properly scholarly attitude.
I envy the savage without any clothes,
Who lives in a tropical latitude;
It’s little of general culture he knows.
But then he escapes the worrisome woes
Of the properly scholarly attitude --
The unceasingly sighed over, wept over, cried over,
The futilely died over, properly scholarly attitude.
I work and I work till I nearly am dead,
And could say what the watchman said -- that I could!
But still, with a sigh and a shake of the head,
“You don’t understand,” it is ruthlessly said,
“The properly scholarly attitude --
The aye to be sought for, wrought for and fought for,
The ne’er to be caught for, properly scholarly attitude --“
I really am sometimes tempted to say
That it’s merely a glittering platitude;
That people have just fallen into the way,
When lacking a subject, to tell of the sway
Of the properly scholarly attitude --
The easily preachable, spread-eagle speechable,
In practice unreachable, properly scholarly attitude.
The poet pursues his beautiful theme;
The preacher his golden beatitude;
And I run after a vanishing dream --
The glittering, will-o’-the-wispish gleam
Of the properly scholarly attitude --
The highly desirable, the very advisable,
The hardly acquirable, properly scholarly attitude.
I envy the savage without any clothes,
Who lives in a tropical latitude;
It’s little of general culture he knows.
But then he escapes the worrisome woes
Of the properly scholarly attitude --
The unceasingly sighed over, wept over, cried over,
The futilely died over, properly scholarly attitude.
I work and I work till I nearly am dead,
And could say what the watchman said -- that I could!
But still, with a sigh and a shake of the head,
“You don’t understand,” it is ruthlessly said,
“The properly scholarly attitude --
The aye to be sought for, wrought for and fought for,
The ne’er to be caught for, properly scholarly attitude --“
I really am sometimes tempted to say
That it’s merely a glittering platitude;
That people have just fallen into the way,
When lacking a subject, to tell of the sway
Of the properly scholarly attitude --
The easily preachable, spread-eagle speechable,
In practice unreachable, properly scholarly attitude.