I will arise and go now, and go and read a book,

For books were surely made for fools like me,

And I shall have some fun there while I hook

At authors' pictures with biography.

James Joyce once studied for the concert stage.

Mencken had meant to make tobacco grow.

Great Dreiser edited a woman's page.

McFee was born aboard a ship, you know.

I bleat, and startle like a fawn to learn

That Anderson once manufactured paint,

That Arthur Symons thought himself a saint.

And David Garnett gave me quite a turn

By finding mushrooms yet unknown to man.

O'Neill has thirty plays in note and plan.

The hounds of spring on winter's traces heave,

As goggle-eyed as I at literature,

Where I have found, if you will but believe,

That Coleridge has for Lowes a great allure,

That Andre Gide wears skull-cap and a shawl,

That Sinclair Lewis worked in Helicon Hall

At Upton Sinclair's Jersey colony.

But does it profit me that Swinnerton,

The moment that his newest novel's done,

Sits down to hot plum pudding, yelling "Whee!"?

Am I a better man because I know

That Arnold Zweig translated all of Poe?

That Huxley hoped to be a good M.D.?

I knew the answer all the time. It's NO!