When The Lid Was On.

They were seated there in silence
    Each one busy with a frown,
It was midnight in the city,
    And the lid was on the town.
They had all been playing poker
    'Mid the rattle of the chink,
When a gloom fell o'er the party,
    For they couldn't buy a drink,
But a little fellow whispered
    As he held a poker hand,
"Can't we get as drunk on water
    As we can upon the land?"
Then we kicked the little rascal,
    And we spoke without a frown,
And we anchored safe in harbor
    When the lid was on the town.

Edwin C. Ranck

Edwin C. Ranck was an American lyricist noted for his work in the early 20th century. He was a prolific writer and his lyrics were often characterized by their humor and wit. One of his standout works is the poem 'The Optimist', which reflects his positive outlook on life. Beyond that, little is known about his personal life or career. He remains a somewhat obscure figure in literary history.

Edwin C. Ranck

You Couldn't Hardly Notice It At All.

Edwin C. Ranck, Simple Poetry

A New Version.

Edwin C. Ranck, Simple Poetry

Crabbed.

Edwin C. Ranck, Simple Poetry

If I Were City Editor.

Edwin C. Ranck, Simple Poetry

English

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Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Waggoner - Canto Second

IF Wytheburn's modest House of prayer,
As lowly as the lowliest dwelling,
Had, with its belfry's humble stock,
A little pair that hang in air,
Been mistress also of a clock,
(And one, too, not in crazy plight)
Twelve strokes that clock would have been telling
Under the brow of old Helvellyn
Its bead-roll of midnight,
Then, when the Hero of my tale
Was passing by, and, down the vale
(The vale now silent, hushed I ween
As if a storm had never been)
Proceeding with a mind at ease;
While the old Familiar of the seas,
Intent to use his utmost haste,
Gained ground upon the Waggon fast,
And gives another lusty cheer;
For spite of rumbling of the wheels,
A welcome greeting he can hear;
It is a fiddle in its glee
Dinning from the CHERRY TREE!

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Lieutenant Luff.

All you that are too fond of wine,
Or any other stuff,
Take warning by the dismal fate
Of one Lieutenant Luff.
A sober man he might have been,
Except in one regard,
He did not like soft water,
So he took to drinking hard!

Said he, "Let others fancy slops,
And talk in praise of Tea,
But I am no Bohemian,
So do not like Bohea.
If wine's a poison, so is Tea,
Though in another shape:
What matter whether one is kill'd
By canister or grape!"

According to this kind of taste
Did he indulge his drouth,
And being fond of Port, he made
A port-hole of his mouth!
A single pint he might have sipp'd
And not been out of sorts,
In geologic phrase - the rock
He split upon was quarts!

To "hold the mirror up to vice"
...

Thomas Hood

The Rubaiyat Of A Kentuckian.

Wake for the sun, that scatters into flight,
    The poker players who have stayed all night;
Drives husbands home with reeling steps, and then--
    Gives to the sleepy "cops" an awful fright.

I sometimes think that never blows so red
    The nose, as when the spirits strike the head;
That every step one takes upon the way
    Makes him wish strongly he were home in bed.

The moving finger writes, but having "pull",
    You think that you can settle things in full,
But when you interview the Police Judge,
    You find that you have made an awful bull.

Some nonsense verses underneath the bough,
    A little "booze", a time to loaf, and thou--
Beside me howling in the wilderness,
    Would be enough for one day anyhow.

Edwin C. Ranck

A Ramshackle Room

When the gusts are at play with the trees on the lawn,
    And the lights are put out in the vault of the night;
When within all is snug, for the curtains are drawn,
    And the fire is aglow and the lamps are alight,
Sometimes, as I muse, from the place where I am
    My thoughts fly away to a room near the Cam.

'Tis a ramshackle room, where a man might complain
    Of a slope in the ceiling, a rise in the floor;
With a view on a court and a glimpse on a lane,
    And no end of cool wind through the chinks of the door;
With a deep-seated chair that I love to recall,
    And some groups of young oarsmen in shorts on the wall.

There's a fat jolly jar of tobacco, some pipes -
    A meerschaum, a briar, a cherry, a clay -
There's a three-handled cup fit for Aud...

R. C. Lehmann

The Wreck Of Rivermouth

Rivermouth Rocks are fair to see,
By dawn or sunset shone across,
When the ebb of the sea has left them free,
To dry their fringes of gold-green moss
For there the river comes winding down,
From salt sea-meadows and uplands brown,
And waves on the outer rocks afoam
Shout to its waters, Welcome home!

And fair are the sunny isles in view
East of the grisly Head of the Boar,
And Agamenticus lifts its blue
Disk of a cloud the woodlands oer;
And southerly, when the tide is down,
Twixt white sea-waves and sand-hills brown,
The beach-birds dance and the gray gulls wheel
Over a floor of burnished steel.

Once, in the old Colonial days,
Two hundred years ago and more,
A boat sailed down through the winding ways
Of Hampton River to that low...

John Greenleaf Whittier

The Musician's Tale - The Wayside Inn - Part Second

THE BALLAD OF CARMILHAN

I

At Stralsund, by the Baltic Sea,
    Within the sandy bar,
At sunset of a summer's day,
Ready for sea, at anchor lay
    The good ship Valdemar.

The sunbeams danced upon the waves,
    And played along her side;
And through the cabin windows streamed
In ripples of golden light, that seemed
    The ripple of the tide.

There sat the captain with his friends,
    Old skippers brown and hale,
Who smoked and grumbled o'er their grog,
And talked of iceberg and of fog,
    Of calm and storm and gale.

And one was spinning a sailor's yarn
    About Klaboterman,
The Kobold of the sea; a spright
Invisible to mortal sight,
    Who o'er the rigging ran.

Sometimes he hammered in the ...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow