| Hamilton Fish Armstrong, ed. The Book of New York Verse. 1917. | | | | Monody on the Astor House | | By Franklin P. Adams |
| | | LAMENT, O Muse, and heave a suspiration, | |
| Make me an epicedium, a threne, | |
| An ode to fit my humid lachrimation, | |
| A dirge ultramarine! | |
| For heavy I, and supercharged with woe, | 5 |
| On reading that the Astor House must go. | |
| |
| Thou noble inn where oft I (Crys of “Louder”) | |
| Repaired to find a frugal bit of lunch; | |
| Where grew the city’s only perfect chowder | |
| And hot Jamaica punch— | 10 |
| So deep my woe that thou art to be razed | |
| I question it can fittingly be phrazed. | |
| |
| Farewell, farewell! If Byron I may borrow— | |
| I read of thee in many an Alger tome, | |
| Unthinking that, in age and bowed with sorrow, | 15 |
| I’d spill to thee a pome; | |
| Unknowing that some day I should deplore | |
| The announcement that thou wert to be no more. | |
| |
| Yet though my trend be super-sentimental, | |
| Thine end I truly do not mind a bit; | 20 |
| 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! | | | | |
|
|
