An Unreformable Reformer + 

I know not how they come about⁠— + 

These alterations in our spelling, + 

But sometimes am disposed to doubt + 

The efficacy of compelling + 

(As still is done to one in school + 

By threatening to whack or twist him) + 

Observance of an iron rule + 

Despite one’s better private system. + 

For when the sinner’s freed from fear + 

He spells, as formerly, by ear. + 

That’s what I have observed, but much + 

By that, I fear, is not decided + 

Against the iron hand (whose touch + 

May none experience, as I did) + 

For under this White House regime + 

Condemning every silent letter, + 

This is the motto, it would seem: + 

“Who spells by ear spells all the better.” + 

If that is what these pranks entail, + 

Executive Compulsion, hail! + 

God grant I know not envy nor, + 

When chatting over cup and saucer, + 

Betray my secret hunger for + 

The high renown of Geoffrey Chaucer. + 

Yet now at last I seem to see + 

My way to equal approbation: + 

When I’m as hard to read as he + 

Phonetes of that far generation + 

Will study me and say: “How grand!⁠— + 

So difficult to understand!” + 

The President, the President!⁠— + 

How enterprising in revision + 

Of Nature’s laws!⁠—how diligent + 

In cutting out a court decision!⁠— + 

How sedulous the stars to woo + 

And keep the seasons rightly going! + 

Ah, seldom we remember who + 

Establishes the time of sowing + 

And reaping, makes the harvest good, + 

And a great man of Leonard Wood. + 

This world is variously bad, + 

And mad as hares in January + 

(’Tis later that the hares are mad, + 

But similes and seasons vary) + 

And Presidents have much to do + 

To keep the March of Mind a-walking, + 

To level up the birth rate, to + 

Pain William Chandler⁠—all by talking. + 

O Father Adam, how you must + 

Rejoice that both your ears are dust! + 