Facile with phrases of length and Latinity,
Like honorificabilitudinity,
Where is the maid could resist your vicinity,
Wiled by the impudent grace of your plea? 
Then your vivacity and pertinacity
Carry the day with the divil’s audacity;
No mere veracity robs your sagacity
Of perspicacity, Barney McGee. 
When all is new to them,
What will you do to them? 
Will you be true to them? 
Who shall decree? 
Here’s a fair strife to you! 
Health and long life to you! 
And a great wife to you,
Barney McGee!

Barney McGee, you’re the pick of gentility;
Nothing can phase you, you’ve such a facility;
Nobody ever yet found your utility,—­
That is the charm of you, Barney McGee;
Under conditions that others would stammer in,
Still unperturbed as a cat or a Cameron,
Polished as somebody in the Decameron,
Putting the glamour on prince or Pawnee! 
In your meanderin’,
Love, and philanderin’,
Calm as a mandarin
Sipping his tea! 
Under the art of you,
Parcel and part of you,
Here’s to the heart of you,
Barney McGee!

You who were ever alert to befriend a man,
You who were ever the first to defend a man,
You who had always the money to lend a man,
Down on his luck and hard up for a V! 
Sure, you’ll be playing a harp in beatitude
(And a quare sight you will be in that attitude)—­
Some day, where gratitude seems but a platitude,
You’ll find your latitude, Barney McGee. 
That’s no flim-flam at all,
Frivol or sham at all,
Just the plain—­Damn it all,
Have one with me! 
Here’s luck and more to you! 
Friends by the score to you,
True to the core to you,
Barney McGee!

THE SEA GYPSY.

I am fevered with the sunset,
I am fretful with the bay,
For the wander-thirst is on me
And my soul is in Cathay.

There’s a schooner in the offing,
With her topsails shot with fire,
And my heart has gone aboard her
For the Islands of Desire.

I must forth again to-morrow! 
With the sunset I must be
Hull down on the trail of rapture
In the wonder of the sea.

SPEECH AND SILENCE.

The words that pass from lip to lip
For souls still out of reach! 
A friend for that companionship
That’s deeper than all speech!

SECRETS.

Three secrets that never were said: 
The stir of the sap in the spring,
The desire of a man to a maid,
The urge of a poet to sing.

THE FIRST JULEP.

I love the lazy Southern spring,
The way she melts around a chap
And lets the great magnolias fling
Their languid petals in his lap.

I love to travel down half-way
And meet her coming up the earth,
With hurdy-gurdy men who play
And make the children dance for mirth.