Around The Corner

Charles Hanson Towne (1877-1949)

Around the corner I have a friend
In this great city that has no end;
Yet days go by, and weeks rush on,
And before I know it, a year is gone,

And I never see my old friend’s face,
For life is a swift and terrible race.
He knows I like him just as well
As in the days when I rang his bell

And he rang mine.

We were younger then,
And now we are busy, tired men;
Tired with trying to make a name
Tired with playing a foolish game,

‘Tomorrow,’ I say, ‘I will call on Jim,
Just to show that I’m thinking of him.’
But tomorrow comes and tomorrow goes,
And the distance between us grows and grows.

Around the corner!— yet miles away ...
‘Here’s a telegram, sir.
Jim died today.’

And that’s what we get and deserve in the end
Around the corner, a vanished friend.

The Saturday Evening Post [v189 #33, February 10, 1917]

Selected poems of Charles Hanson Towne, New York, London, D. Appleton and company, 1925.

Biographical note

Charles Hanson Towne (1877-1949), was an author, editor, and popular New York celebrity. He moved from Kentucky to New York City with his family at the age of three. Towne began his literary career quite early as the eleven year old "publisher" of the Unique Monthly, a children's magazine written by and for Towne and his friends. After a year at City College, Towne got his first break as an editorial assistant at Cosmopolitan magazine. In 1901 he moved to the Smart Set, a new magazine for a sophisticated urban clientele, where he held numerous positions before becoming editor in 1904. Smart Set was the first of the many important magazines Towne was to edit, including the Delineator (1907-1910), Designer (1910-1915), McClure's (1914-1920), and Harper's Bazaar (1926-1929). In addition to his editorial duties, Towne was a prolific writer. He authored numerous volumes of poetry, novels, plays, travel essays, an etiquette book, song cycles, lyrics for musicals and operettas, and memoirs. Much of his writing celebrates New York City, most notably his work Manhattan: A Poem (1909) and his books of reminiscences. Towne was felt by many to the the quintessential New Yorker. From 1931-1937 he wrote a personal and literary column for the New York American, taught a poetry course at Columbia University, and in 1940 joined the touring company of the Broadway hit, Life With Father. In 1945 Towne summed up his career with the autobiography, So Far, So Good.