From Ethel Jacobson’s Who Me?.

Conversational Chimera

You frankly begin
With “Needless to say —,”
Then proceed to tell me
Anyway.

But I dream of someone —
Don’t wake me, don’t —
Who, when it’s needless
To say something, won’t.

Brief History of Feminine Emancipation

From Adam’s rib
To Women’s Lib.

Worried Capitalist

Oh, what shall I put my money in?
Industrials? Bolivian tin?
What’s a good hedge against inflation?
Debentures? Gold? A combination
Of Building and Loans and blue-chip stock?
Or stash it away in a mattress or sock?
These jittery times, it’s hard to know.
Should I plan for a balanced portfolio,
Or would it be smarter to go and blow
The whole fifty bucks at Pimlico?

The Unprejudiced

Fair, always open to suggestion,
 Unbiased, though my views are strong ones,
I see all sides of every question —
 My side and the wrong ones.

No Golden Age

I rather think that Socrates,
Viewing today’s mediocrities,
Would ring for room service and, aghast,
Order “A double hemlock, fast!”

Unsung Genius

His fame is dim,
 His life unknown.
No wreath for him,
 No carven stone.
He lived, he wrote,
 He now is gone —
The tireless pote
 We call Anon.

Regrets

Tears, my glum repentant one,
 Mean you now agree
That sinning wasn’t half the fun
 You hoped that it would be.

Happy Birthday!

You’ll never be old —
As old, I mean,
As Thirty seems
To Seventeen.

Golden Eagle

O golden bird,
Daughter of the sun
And of perilous crags,
O soaring, burnished one,
My sight can barely
Trace you on the sky.

Yet how miraculous
Your huntress eye
That marks the slighest
Bend of a weed
Where a white-footed mouse
Is garnering seed
Too far from home.

A plummet, a swoop, a shrill
Half-cry in the throat,
Then the meadow is empty, still.
Once more pinions are spread
And the bronze bird takes flight,
Staring into the sun
That blinds my human sight.