<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=508586" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Prelude</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">To smite Apollo's lyre I am unable;<br>Of loveliness, alas! I cannot sing.<br>My lot it i, across the tavern table,<br>To start a chorus to the strumming string.<br>I have no gift to touch your heart to pity;<br>I have no power to ring the note of pain:<br>All I can do is pipe a pot-house ditty,<br>Or roar a Rabelaisian refrain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Behold yon minstrel of the empty belly,<br>Who seeks to please the bored and waiting throng,<br>Outside the Opera with ukulele,<br>And raucous strains of syncopated song.<br>His rag-time mocks their eager hearts a-hunger<br>For golden voices, melody divine:<br>Yet . . . throw a penny to the ballad-monger;<br>Yet . . . listen idly to this song of mine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For with a humble heart I clank rhyme's fetters,<br>And bare my buttocks to the critic knout;<br>A graceless hobo in the Land of Letters,<br>Piping my ditties of the down-and-out.<br>A bar-room bard . . . so if a coin you're flinging,<br>Pay me a pot, and let me dream and booze;<br>To stars of scorn my dour defiance ringing,<br>With battered banjo and a strumpet Muse.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Robert+William+Service">Robert William Service</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=508586" data-title="Prelude de Robert William Service" data-description="To smite Apollo's lyre I am unable; Of loveliness, alas! I cannot sing. My lot it i, across the tavern table, To start a chorus to the strumming string. I have no gift to touch your heart to pity; I have no power to ring the note of pain: All I ca..."></div> </div> </div>

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