Explore "Fifty-Fifty" by Franklin P. Adams on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
For something like eleven summers / I've written things that aimed to teach / Our careless mealy-mouthed mummers / To be more sedulous of speech.
So sloppy of articulation / So limping and so careless they / About distinct enunciation, / Often I don't know what they say.
The other night an able actor, / Declaiming of some lines I heard, / I hailed a public benefactor, / As I distinguished every word.
But, oh! the subtle disappointment!
Thorn on the celebrated rose / And fly within the well-known ointment! / (Allusions everybody knows.)
Came forth the words exact and snappy.
And as I sat there, that P. M., / I mused, "Was I not just as happy / When I could not distinguish them? "