Poseurs

I detest the man who poses,
who in every act discloses
his conviction that he's bigger
than the biggest star that shines;
for the real big man is modest,
while the fakir's built of sawdust,
and you'll never see a posing gent
who's strictly genuine.

I have watched the modern lion
with admirers round him sighin',
and I longed to swat him gently
with a length of garden hose,
as he glared at silly lasses
through his oriental glasses,
while his hair was dangling round him
till it nearly reached his toes.

I have heard a genius stammer
till it gave me katzenjammer,
and he made his speech eccentric
as an advertising scheme;
and I've heard about another
who insisted that he'd smother
if he wore a hat so, lidless
he went round, as in a dream.

Canst imagine John H. Milton,
(he whose loud, immortal liftin'
fixed his name upon the ages)
posing like a circus freak?
Can you see the bard of Avon
try an audience to spavin
by reciting his own verses
and his dramas by the week?

Modesty is most majestic;
it's a virtue quite domestic,
but it's worth our cultivation,
whether great or half-way great;
whether we are clerks or writers,
alchemists or seers or fighters;
and the man who always poses
may be written down a skate.

~ Walt Mason
Boundary Creek Times — June 1910