dots-menu
×

Home  »  The Book of New York Verse  »  Edgar Fawcett

Hamilton Fish Armstrong, ed. The Book of New York Verse. 1917.

The Buntling Ball, 1884 (extracts)

Edgar Fawcett

Mr. Buntling Speaks:

O PROUD New York, that wast New Amsterdam,

How art thou fallen away from dignity!

Methinks thy Battery and thy Bowling Green

Should split in angered earthquake at thy shame!

Thou, too, indignant Peter, shouldst arise,

A shade with slim clay pipe and ligneous leg,

To lay thy broad staff on the ungrateful heads

Of these thy base descendants, them that love

Gross pelf and pander to the parvenu!

For such am I, even such, and better far

The laboring Scythia’s westward-pointed prow

Nor me nor mine had hither borne unscathed

Through the strait Narrows; but that either strand

Had clashing met, and whelmed off Sandy Hook

The great ship’s vigor in tumultuous waves!

Thus were averted this unseemly Ball,

Its hollow and absurd extravagance

Checked by the grim economy of death!

Chorus of Knickerbocker Young Men

Old man, do not be nonsensical

In your views about New York;

You are needlessly forensical

For a potentate in Pork!

Why not recollect with gratitude

That we throng your mansion wide,

And express no moral platitude

Upon Knickerbocker pride?

Since the days when dull old Trinity

Was a temple far up town,

And a girl was thought divinity

If she owned but one silk gown;

Since the days when each festivity

They would all by twelve forsake,

And the dominant proclivity

Was for lemonade-and-cake;

Since the days when aristocracy

Of the gender known as male,

Would esteem it vain plutocracy

To exploit a swallow-tail;

Since the days when custom’s manacle

Was a bond of rigid force,—

Since the days thus puritanical,

We have altered things, of course.

For the years are cruel pillagers,

As they lay old fashions low,

And to live like simple villagers

Is no longer comme il faut.

Our progenitors (peace be with them!)

Were a very stupid lot,

And so little we agree with them

That we imitate them not.

They were certainly respectable,

As with pride we now declare,

But we find it more delectable

If we draw the line just there.

For to fling aside all flattery,

And to speak as hits the mark,

They were narrow as the Battery

When compared with Central Park.