Hamilton Fish Armstrong, ed. The Book of New York Verse. 1917.
Monody on the Astor HouseFranklin P. Adams
L
Make me an epicedium, a threne,
An ode to fit my humid lachrimation,
A dirge ultramarine!
For heavy I, and supercharged with woe,
On reading that the Astor House must go.
Repaired to find a frugal bit of lunch;
Where grew the city’s only perfect chowder
And hot Jamaica punch—
So deep my woe that thou art to be razed
I question it can fittingly be phrazed.
I read of thee in many an Alger tome,
Unthinking that, in age and bowed with sorrow,
I’d spill to thee a pome;
Unknowing that some day I should deplore
The announcement that thou wert to be no more.
Thine end I truly do not mind a bit;
My grief for that is wholly incidental,
This is my woe, to wit:
The riveting and blasting that I hear—
Shades of the Woolworth tower!—another year!