I know not how they come about—
These alterations in our spelling,
But sometimes am disposed to doubt
The efficacy of compelling
(As still is done to one in school
By threatening to whack or twist him)
Observance of an iron rule
Despite one’s better private system.
For when the sinner’s freed from fear
He spells, as formerly, by ear.
That’s what I have observed, but much
By that, I fear, is not decided
Against the iron hand (whose touch
May none experience, as I did)
For under this White House regime
Condemning every silent letter,
This is the motto, it would seem:
“Who spells by ear spells all the better.”
If that is what these pranks entail,
Executive Compulsion, hail!
God grant I know not envy nor,
When chatting over cup and saucer,
Betray my secret hunger for
The high renown of Geoffrey Chaucer.
Yet now at last I seem to see
My way to equal approbation:
When I’m as hard to read as he
Phonetes of that far generation
Will study me and say: “How grand!—
So difficult to understand!”
The President, the President!—
How enterprising in revision
Of Nature’s laws!—how diligent
In cutting out a court decision!—
How sedulous the stars to woo
And keep the seasons rightly going!
Ah, seldom we remember who
Establishes the time of sowing
And reaping, makes the harvest good,
And a great man of Leonard Wood.
This world is variously bad,
And mad as hares in January
(’Tis later that the hares are mad,
But similes and seasons vary)
And Presidents have much to do
To keep the March of Mind a-walking,
To level up the birth rate, to
Pain William Chandler—all by talking.
O Father Adam, how you must
Rejoice that both your ears are dust!