Those Were The Days, Lee Adams and Charles Strouse
The Village Blacksmith, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
20 (The Candystore), Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Burma Shave road signs
Let’s Take an Old-Fashioned Walk, Irving Berlin
Manners, Elizabeth Bishop
He Flies Through The Air – The Man on the Flying Trapeze,
……George Leybourne
Arcturus is his other name, Emily Dickinson
I’m Old Fashioned, Johnny Mercer and Jereme Kern
Doggerel By A Senior Citizen, W.H. Auden (excerpts)
Merry-Go-Round, Langston Hughes
Back in the Day, Garrison Keilor
Take Me out to the Ball Game, Jack Norworth

 


Those Were The Days
by Lee Adams and Charles Strouse

You should get the text from another source.

 
 

The Village Blacksmith
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Under a spreading chestnut tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate’er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night,
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
When the evening sun is low.

And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar,
And watch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing-floor.

He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter’s voice,
Singing in the village choir,
And it makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother’s voice,
Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling,—rejoicing,—sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night’s repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought!

 
 

20 (The Candystore)
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

You should get the text from another source.

 
 

Burma Shave road signs

No Lady Likes
To Dance
Or Dine
Accompanied by
A Porcupine
Burma-Shave

The Queen
Of Hearts
Now Loves The Knave
The King
Ran Out of
Burma-Shave

If Honey Shuns
Your Fond Embrace
Don’t Shoot
The Milkman
Feel Your Face
Burma-Shave

Does Your Husband Misbehave
Grunt and Grumble
Rant and Rave?
Shoot The Brute Some
Burma-Shave

The Whale Took Jonah
Down The Hatch
Then Coughed Him Up
Because He Scratched
Burma-Shave

Is He lonesome
Or Just Blind
That Guy Who Drives
So Close Behind?
Burma-Shave

School Ahead
Take it Slow
Let The Little
Shavers Grow
Burma-Shave

If You Dislike
Big Traffic Fines
Slow Down
Till You
Can Read These Signs
Burma-Shave

Don’t take
A Curve
At 60 per.
We Hate To Lose
A Customer
Burma-Shave

If you
Don’t Know
Whose Signs
These Are
You Can’t Have
Driven Very Far.
Burma Shave

 
 

Let’s Take An Old-Fashioned Walk
by Irving Berlin

You should get the text from another source.

 
 

Manners
by Elizabeth Bishop

You should get the text from another source.

 
 

The Man on the Flying Trapeze
by George Leybourne

Once I was happy, but now I’m forlorn
Like an old coat, that is tattered and torn,
Left on this wide world to fret and to mourn,
Betrayed by a maid in her teens.
Oh, the girl that I loved she was handsome,
I tried all I knew her to please,
But I could not please her one quarter so well
As the man on the flying trapeze.

He would fly through the air
With the greatest of ease,
This daring young man
On the flying trapeze;
His movements were graceful,
All girls he could please,
And my love he purloined away.

Her father and mother were both on my side,
And very hard tried to make her my bride.
Her father he sighed, and her mother she cried,
To see her throw herself away.
‘Twas all no avail, she’d go there every night,
And throw him bouquets on the stage,
Which caused him to meet her; how he ran me down
To tell you would take a whole page.

One night I as usual called at her dear home,
Found there her father and mother alone.
I asked for my love, and soon they made known,
To my horror that she’d run away.
She’d packed up her goods and eloped in the night
With him with the greatest of ease;
From three stories high he had lowered her down
To the ground on his flying trapeze.

Some months after this I chanced in a hall,
Was greatly surprised to see on the wall
A bill in red letters that did my heart gall,
That she was appearing with him.
He’d taught her gymnastics and dressed her in tights,
To help him to live at his ease,
And made her assume a masculine name,
And now she goes on the trapeze.

She floats through the air
With the greatest of ease,
You’d think her a man
On the flying trapeze.
She does all the work
While he takes his ease,
And that’s what became of my love.

 
 

Arcturus is his other name
by Emily Dickinson

Arcturus is his other name, —
I’d rather call him star!
It’s so unkind of science
To go and interfere!

I pull a flower from the woods, —
A monster with a glass
Computes the stamens in a breath,
And has her in a class

Whereas I took the butterfly
Aforetime in my hat,
He sits erect in cabinets,
The clover-bells forgot.

What once was heaven, is zenith now.
Where I proposed to go
When time’s brief masquerade was done,
Is mapped, and charted too!

Perhaps the kingdom of Heaven ‘s changed!
I hope the children there
Won’t be new-fashioned when I come,
And laugh at me, and stare!

I hope the father in the skies
Will lift his little girl, —
Old-fashioned, naughty, everything, —
Over the stile of pearl!

 
 

I’m Old Fashioned
by Johnny Mercer

You should get the text from another source.

 
 

Doggerel by A Senior Citizen (excerpts)
by W.H. Auden

Our earth in 1969
Is not the planet I call mine,
The world, I mean, that gives me strength
To hold off Chaos at arm’s length.

My Eden landscapes and their climes
Are constructs from Edwardian times,
When bath-rooms took up lots of space,
And, before eating, one said Grace.

The automobile, the aeroplane,
Are useful gadgets, but profane:
The enginry of which I dream
Is moved by water or by steam.

Reason requires that I approve
The light-bulb which I cannot love:
To me more reverence-commanding
A fish-tail burner on the landing.

My family ghosts I fought and routed,
Their values, though, I never doubted:
I thought the Protestant Work-Ethic
Both practical and sympathetic.

When couples played or sang duets,
It was immoral to have debts:
I shall continue till I die
To pay in cash for what I buy.

The Book of Common Prayer we knew
Was that of 1662:
Though with-it sermons may be well,
Liturgical reforms are hell.

Sex was of course — it always is —
The most enticing of mysteries,
But news-stands did not then supply
Manichean pornography.

Then Speech was mannerly, an Art,
Like learning not to belch or fart:
I cannot settle which is worse,
The Anti-Novel or Free Verse.

Nor are those Ph.D’s my kith,
Who dig the symbol and the myth:
I count myself a man of letters
Who writes, or hopes to, for his betters.

Dare any call Permissiveness
An educational success?
Saner those class-rooms which I sat in,
Compelled to study Greek and Latin.

Though I suspect the term is crap,
There is a Generation Gap,
Who is to blame? Those, old or young,
Who will not learn their Mother-Tongue.

But Love, at least, is not a state
Either en vogue or out-of-date,
And I’ve true friends, I will allow,
To talk and eat with here and now.

Me alienated? Bosh! It’s just
As a sworn citizen who must
Skirmish with it that I feel
Most at home with what is Real.

 
 

Merry-Go-Round
by Langston Hughes

Where is the Jim Crow section
On this merry-go-round,
Mister, cause I want to ride?
Down South where I come from
White and colored
Can’t sit side by side.
Down South on the train
There’s a Jim Crow car.
On the bus we’re put in the back—
But there ain’t no back
To a merry-go-round!
Where’s the horse
For a kid that’s black?

 
 

Back in the Day
by Garrison Keilor

You should get the text from another source.

 
 

Take Me Out to the Ball Game
by Jack Norworth

Take me out to the ball game,
Take me out with the crowd.
Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks,
I don’t care if I never get back,
Let me root, root, root for the home team,
If they don’t win it’s a shame.
For it’s one, two, three strikes you’re out,
At the old ball game.

Katie Casey was baseball mad,
Had the fever and had it bad;
Just to root for the home town crew,
Ev’ry sou
Katie blew.
On a Saturday, her young beau
Called to see if she’d like to go,
To see a show, but Miss Kate said No,
I’ll tell you what you can do:

Take me out to the ball game,
Take me out with the crowd.
Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack,
I don’t care if I never get back,
Let me root, root, root for the home team,
If they don’t win it’s a shame.
For it’s one, two, three strikes you’re out,
At the old ball game.

Katie Casey saw all the games,
Knew the players by their first names;
Told the umpire he was wrong,
All along
Good and strong.
When the score was just two to two,
Katie Casey knew what to do,
Just to cheer up the boys she knew,
She made the gang sing this song:

Take me out to the ball game,
Take me out with the crowd.
Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack,
I don’t care if I never get back,
Let me root, root, root for the home team,
If they don’t win it’s a shame.
For it’s one, two, three strikes you’re out,
At the old ball game.