A New Blue Book
[It was hardly to be supposed that the young decadents who once rioted … in the Yellow Book would be content to remain in obscurity after the metamorphosis of that periodical and the consequent exclusion of themselves. The Savoy, we learn, to be edited by Mr. Arthur Symons and Mr. Aubrey Beardsley, will appear early in December.––Globe.]‘The world’s great age begins anew,’ Cold virtue’s weeds are cast; Our heads are light, our tales are blue, And things are moving fast; And no one any longer quarrels With anybody else’s morals. A racier journal stamps its pages With Beardsleys braver far; A bolder Editor engages To shame the morning star, On London Nights, not near so chilly, Sampling a shadier Piccadilly. Satyr and Faun their late repose Now burst like anything; New Mænads, turning sprightlier toes, Enjoy a jauntier fling; With lustier lips old Pan shall play Drain-pipes along the sewer’s way. Priapus, wrongly left for dead, Is dead no more than Pan; Silenus rises from his bed And hiccups like a man; There’s something rather chaste (between us) About Priapus and Silenus. O cease to brew your Bodley pap Whence all the spice is spent! The splendour of its primal tap Was gone when Aubrey went; Behold that subtle Sphinx prepare Fresh liquors fit to lift your hair. Another Magazine shall rise And paint the palsied town, Of humbler hue, of simpler size, And sold at half a crown; Please note the pregnant brand––Savoy, And don’t confuse with saveloy.
Owen Seaman’s other poems:
