DAVID BELASCO

King David of old slew the Philistines;
Our David has made them admirers and patrons;
He has numbered the people
Night after night in his theatres.
Will he ever, I wonder, send forth for the Shunammite?
Many there be who would answer his calling,
For he has shown ambitious fair women
To acting's high places.
As Rodin in marble saw wondrous creations
To be freed by the chisel,
So Belasco in immature genius and beauty
Sees the resplendent star to be kindled
At his own steady beacon.
Too varied a mind for our comprehension,
Too big and too broad and too subtle
To be understood of the bourgeois American
Whom he has led decade after decade
By a nose ring artistic.
Capable of everything, he has worked
With the ease of a master, giving the public
Marvelous detail, unfailing sensation and poses pictorial;
Preferring the certain success to arduous striving
For the more excellent things of the future.
Like David his forebear, a king but no prophet,
Amazingly wise in his own generation.
A wizard in art of the everyday,
Lord of the spotlight and dimmer,
But nursing the unconquerable hope, the inviolable shade