The Properly Scholarly Attitude by Adelaide Crapsey - a Poetry Friday post
I've been researching and writing, revising and writing, starting over again, etcetera this week. And it seems that perhaps I have finally started a draft of the picture book biography I'm working on that is doing what I would like it to do. Part of it is, of course, that I continue to seek after the "properly scholarly attitude."
Here's a rather light and humorous poem from Adelaide Crapsey about just that, which reminds me a bit of W.S. Gilbert (of Gilbert & Sullivan fame).
The Properly Scholarly Attitude
by Adelaide Crapsey
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.
Happy Poetry Friday, all. You can reach Julie Larios's roundup of today's Poetry Friday posts by clicking the box below.
