Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Upstairs Downstairs

Hervey Allen

THE JUDGE, who lives impeccably upstairs

With dull decorum and its implication,

Has all his servants in to family prayers

And edifies his soul with exhortation.

Meanwhile, his blacks live wastefully downstairs;

Not always chaste, they manage to exist

With less decorum than the judge upstairs,

And find withal a something that he missed.

This painful fact a Swede philosopher,

Who tarried for a fortnight in our city,

Remarked one evening at the meal, before

We paralyzed him silent with our pity;

Saying the black man, living with the white,

Had given more than white men could requite.