Magyar H. P. Lovecraft Portál - hplovecraft.hu
My Favourite Character
Szerző: Howard Phillips Lovecraft • Év: 1925
About this season ‘tis a smart proceeding
In mild aesthetick groups and letter’d places
To choose a fav’rite from one’s daily reading,
Explaining brightly one’s selective basis;
But sure, whate’er I say can only hurt me,
For fac’d with such a test, my wits desert me!
I am told that certain tastes are e’er in fashion—
Safe, tame, and classic, e’en tho’ somewhat shopworn;
A choice thus order’d ne’er will be a rash one,
Suiting those thoughts and standards on the top worn—
Esmond, D. Copperfield, or Hiawatha,
Or anything from some nice high-school author.
A few gay souls affect with scorn to question
The proper pref’rences of milder mortals,
And with much pride display a tough digestion
For such spic’d themes as lurk behind lockt portals:
Jurgen, Clerk Nicholas, Boccaccio’s misses,
And sundry things of Joyce’s, from Ulysses.
But if sincerity be not outmoded
In this degen’rate day of muddled meaning,
Much may be said for those whose hearts are loaded
With figures of a lowlier mood and leaning—
Boyhood’s own idols, whom the sages hear not—
Frank Merriwell, Nick Carter, and Fred Fearnot!
Then, too, ‘tis hard just now to dodge the moderns,
Our cubists, sharply to tomorrow dated;
Aesthetes of model 1930—odd ones
Whose palates with all thought and grace are sated:
Trust them to give some shapeless freak a trial,
From T. S. Eliot or last April’s Dial!
Now as for me, I am no man of learning
To know just what I like and why I like it;
Letters and hist’ry set my poor head turning
Till not a choice can permanently strike it!
My fav’rite? Fie on printed information—
I’ll frankly hand myself the nomination!
1/1. oldal
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