The Raving
1921
The Magazine of Fun, August 1921, p. 33–34
It was with a vague foreboding, notwithstanding conscience’s goading
I alighted from the taxi, and went onward toward the door,
All upon a dark and sober sultry night of last October
When the sky was clouded over, and the winds in passing bore
Messages of woe eternal wafted from the Stygian shore,
As a warning, nothing more.
Filled with direct apprehension, filled with fears I dare not mention,
I beheld my partner standing, standing at the ballroom door;
And I couldn’t keep from staring at the costume she was wearing,
All the earth’s supply of daring from that costume seemed to pour,
Merely airy films and gauzes, some behind and some before
Only this, and nothing more.
Then the mystic weird contortions of the dancers’ upper portions
Drove them into a frenzy such as never seen before,
Till one of the attendants cried with wrath upon his features
“O thou wild and wilful creatures, cease this, cease this I implore.
If you do not cease this you will be compelled to leave the floor,
And be seen here nevermore.”
Tired, at last my spirit wandered, and my inner being pondered,
Nauseated at each couple as it skittered o’er the floor,
At the skipping and the sliding, at the pushing and the gliding,
And my partner’s soft confiding, telling that her feet were sore,
Till I, with a sickly feeling sinking to my bosom’s core
Felt like dancing nevermore.
L’ENVOI
Now the function long has ended, but my social rank’s descended,
Since the figure on my bank roll isn’t what it was before;
And the mere idea of taking some young vampire in the making
To this brand of social faking, is a thought I now abhor.
All my social ambitions now lie dead upon the floor
To be lifted—nevermore.
Return to the Quaint and Curious index for more pastiches and parodies of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”.
