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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>An Ode In Time of Inauguration</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(March 4, 1913)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>Thine aid, O Muse, I consciously beseech; <br>I crave thy succour, ask for thine assistance <br>That men may cry: "Some little ode! A peach!" <br>O Muse, grant me the strength to go the distance! <br>For odes, I learn, are dithyrambs, and long; <br>Exalted feeling, dignity of theme <br>And complicated structure guide the song. <br>(All this from Webster's book of high esteem.)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Let complicated structures not becloud <br>My lucid lines, nor weight with overloading. <br>To Shelley, Keats, and Wordsworth and that crowd <br>I yield the bays for grand and lofty oding. <br>Mine but the task to trace a country's growth, <br>As evidenced by each innauguration <br>From Washington's to Wilson's primal oath-- <br>In these U.S., the celebrated nation.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But stay! or ever that I start to sing, <br>Or e'er I loose my fine poetic forces, <br>I ought, I think, to do the decent thing, <br>Ti Wit: give credit to my many sources: <br>Barnes's "Brief History of the U.S.A.," <br>Bryce, Ridpath, Scudder, Fiske, J.B. McMaster, <br>A book of odes, a Webster, a Roget-- <br>The bibliography of this poetaster.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Flow, flow, my pen, as gently as sweet Afton ever flowed! <br>An thou dost ill, shall this be a poor thing, but mine ode.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">G.W., initial prex, <br>Right down in Wall Street, New York City, <br>Took his first oath. Oh, multiplex <br>The whimsies quaint, the comments witty <br>One might evolve from that! I scorn <br>To mock the spot where he was sworn.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">On next Inauguration Day <br>He took the avouchment sempiternal <br>Way down in Phil-a-delph-i-a, <br>Where rises now the L.H. Journal. <br>His farewell speech in '96 <br>Said: "'Ware the Trusts and all their tricks!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">John Adams fell on darksome days: <br>March fourth was blustery and sleety; <br>The French behaved in horrid ways <br>Until John Jay drew up a treaty. <br>Came the Eleventh Amendment, too, <br>Providing that--but why tell you?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">T. Jefferson, one history showed, <br>Held all display was vain and idle; <br>Alone, unpanoplied he rode; <br>Alone he hitched his horse's bridle. <br>No ball that night, no carouse, <br>But back to Conrad's boarding house.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He tied that bridle to the fence <br>The morning of inauguration; <br>John Davis saw him do it; whence <br>Arose his "simple" reputation. <br>The White House, though, with Thomas J., <br>Had chefs--and parties every day.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">THE MUSE INTERRUPTS THE ODIST</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">If I were you I think I'd change my medium; <br>I'm weary of your meter and your style. <br>The sameness of it sickens me to tedium; <br>I'll quit unless you switch it for a while.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">THE ODIST REPLIES</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I bow to thee, my Muse, most eloquent of pleaders; <br>But why embarras me in front of all these readers?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Madison's inauguration <br>Was a lovely celebration. <br>In a suit of wool domestic <br>Rode he, stately and majestic, <br>Making it be manifest <br>Clothes American are best. <br>This has thundered through the ages. <br>(See our advertising pages.)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Lightly I pass along, and so <br>Come to the terms of James Monroe <br>Who framed the doctrine far too well <br>Known for the odist to retell. <br>His period of friendly dealing <br>Began The Era of Good Feeling.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">John Quincy Adams followed him in Eighteen Twenty-Four; <br>Election was exciting--the details I shall ignore. <br>But his inauguration as our country's President <br>Was, take it from McMaster, some considerable event. <br>It was a brilliant function, and I think I ought to add <br>The Philadelphia "ledger" said a gorgeous time was had.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Old Andrew Jackson's pair of terms were terribly exciting; <br>That stern, intrepid warrior had little else than fighting. <br>A time of strife and turbulence, of politics and flurry. <br>But deadly dull for poem themes, so, Mawruss, I should worry!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">In Washington did Martin Van <br>A stately custom then decree; <br>Old Hickory, the vetran, <br>Must ride with him, the people's man, <br>For all the world to see. <br>A pleasant custom, in a way, <br>And yet I should have laughed <br>To see the Sage of Oyster Bay <br>On Tuesday ride with Taft. <br>(Pardon me this <br>Parenthetical halt: <br>That sight you'll miss, <br>But it isn't my fault.)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">William Henry Harrison came <br>Riding a horse of alabaster, <br>But the weather that day was a sin and a shame, <br>Take it from me and John McMaster. <br>Only a month--and Harrison died, <br>And V.P. Tyler began preside. <br>A far from popular prex was he, <br>And the next one was Polk from Tennessee. <br>There were two inaugural balls for him <br>But the rest of his record is rather dim.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Had I the pen of a Pope or a Thackeray, <br>Had I the wisdom of Hegel or Kant, <br>Then might I sing as I'd like to of Zachary, <br>Then might I sing a Taylorian chant. <br>Oh, for the lyrical art of a Tennyson! <br>Oh, for the skill of Macaulay or Burke! <br>None of these mine; so I give him my benison, <br>Turning reluctantly back to my work.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">O Millard Fillmore! when a man refers <br>To thee, what direful, awful thing occurs? <br>Though in name itself thy name have nought of wit, <br>Yet--and this doth confound me to admit <br>When I do hear it, I do smile; nay, more-- <br>I laugh, I scream, I cachinnate, I roar <br>As Wearied Business Men do shake with glee <br>At mimes that say "Dubuque" or "Kankakee"; <br>As basement-brows that laugh at New Rochelle; <br>As lackwits laugh when actors mention Hell. <br>Perhaps--it may be so--I am not sure-- <br>Perhaps it is that thou wast so obscure, <br>And that one seldom hears a single word of thee; <br>I know a lot of girls that never heard of thee. <br>Hence did I smile, perhaps. . . . How very near <br>The careless laughing to the thoughtful tear! <br>O Fillmore, let me sheathe my mocking pen. <br>God rest thee! I'll not laugh at thee again!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I heard it remarked that to Pierce's election <br>There wasn't a soul had the slightest objection. <br>I have also been told, by some caustical wit, <br>That no one said 'nay' when he wanted to quit. <br>Yet Franklin Pierce, forgotten man, <br>I celebrate your fame. <br>I'm doing just the best I can <br>To keep alive your name, <br>Though as President, F.P., <br>You didn't do as much for me.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Of James Buchanan things a score <br>I might recite. I'll say that he was <br>The only White House bachelor-- <br>The only one, that's what J.B. was. <br>For he was a bachelor-- <br>For he might have been a bigamist, <br>A Mormon, A polygamist, <br>And had thirty wives or more; <br>But this be his memorial: <br>He was ever unuxorial, <br>And he remained a bachelor-- <br>He re-mai-ai-ai-ai-ai-ai-ai-ai-ai-ained a bachelor .</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Lincoln! I falter, feeling it to be <br>As if all words of mine in praise of him <br>Were as the veriest dolt that saw the sun; <br>And God had spoken him and said to him: <br>"I bid you tell me what you think of it." <br>And he should answer: "Oh, the sun is very nice." <br>So sadly fitted I to speak in praise <br>Of Lincoln.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Now during Andrew Johnson's term the currency grew stable; <br>We bought Alaska and we laid the great Atlantic cable; <br>And then there came eight years of Grant; thereafter four of Hayes; <br>And in his time the parties fell on fierce and parlous days; <br>And Garfield came, and Arthur too, And Congress shoes were worn, <br>And Brooklyn Bridge was built and I, your gifted bard, was born.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Cleveland and Harrison came along then; <br>Followed an era of Cleveland again. <br>Came then McKinley and--light me a pipe-- <br>Hey there, composing room, get some new type!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I sing him now as I shall sing him again; <br>I sing him now as I have sung before. <br>How fluently his name comes off my pen! <br>O Theodore!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Bless you and keep you, T.R.! <br>Energy tireless,eternal, <br>Fixed and particular star, <br>Theodore, Teddy, the Colonel.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Energy tireless, eternal; <br>Hater of grafters and crooks! <br>Theodore, Teddy, the Colonel, <br>Writer and lover of books.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Hater of grafters and crooks, <br>Forceful, adroit, and expressive, <br>Writer and lover of books, <br>Nevertheless a progressive.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Forceful, adroit, and expressive, <br>Often asserting the trite; <br>Nevertheless a progressive; <br>Errant, but generally right.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Often asserting the trite; <br>Stubborn, and no one can force you. <br>Errant, but generally right-- <br>Yet, on the whole, I indorse you.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Stubborn, and no one can force you, <br>Fixed and particular star, <br>Yet, on the whole, I indorse you, <br>Bless you and keep you T.R.!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">It blew, it rained, it snowed, it stormed, it froze, it hailed, it sleeted <br>The day that William Howard Taft upon the chair was seated. <br>The four long years that followed--ah, that I should make a rhyme of it! <br>For Mr. taft assures me that he had an awful time of it. <br>And yet meseems he did his best; and as we bid good-bye, <br>I'll add he did a better job than you'd have done--or I.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Welcome to thee! I shake thy hand, <br>New prexy of our well-known land. <br>May what we merit, and no less, <br>Descend to give us happiness! <br>May what we merit, and no more, <br>Descend on us in measured store! <br>Give us but peace when we shall earn <br>The right to such a rich return! <br>Give us but plenty when we show <br>That we deserve to have it so!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=392926" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Mine ode is finished! Tut! It is a slight one, <br>But blame me not; I do as I am bid. <br>The editors of COLLIER'S said to write one, <br>And I did.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Franklin+P.+Adams">Franklin P. Adams</a></strong></div>