Written Expressly for The Western Brewer by CHARLES FREDERIC – March 1912
Professors who wonder why this thing or that
Is this way or that way or so,
Here’s something I’ll set you to figuring at
That people are anxious to know.
Of course it’s important, if planets should turn,
The reason the public should hear;
But here is a thing I am longing to learn:
Now, why is the foam on the Beer?
The study of science is wonderful, yes,
Its triumphs are many and grand.
No longer the causes of things we must guess,
Each now we can all understand-
Why steam is produced by the action of fire,
Why seasons in turn reappear—
But, if you’d permit me, I’d like to inquire:
Oh, why is the foam on the Beer?
I haven’t a doubt there’s a cause for the same
Well known to the scientist folk,
Who know why the smoke comes from out of the flame
Instead of the flame from the smoke.
But knowledge is one of the things, it is said,
That we want when we want it, it’s clear;
So, Mr. Professor, please tell me instead:
Oh, why is the foam on the Beer?
And if it should be that you cannot explain
This matter to folks such as I,
If silence the sciences still shall maintain
And yield us no simple reply,
Perhaps then a layman without a degree,
Who’s neither a prophet nor seer.
May venture opinion why thus it should be,
Tell why there is foam on the Beer.
The ocean, the wide rolling ocean, is white
With the foam on each ripple and crest;
The wind bearing onward the sailor tonight
Blows straight for his home in the west.
The ocean, the wide, rolling ocean, puts on
Its white when the harbor is near;
And what is the color that comes with the dawn?
The same as the foam on the Beer.
The mountaintop wears it, a halo, a crown;
Eternal, unchanging, the snow
That there from the roof of the planet looks down
On the whole of earth’s amber below.
The mountain its halo majestic maintains
Through all of the change of the year;
Through seasons and suns still that halo remains,
The same as the foam on the Beer.
But there is a tenderer halo I know
Than waves by their ripples empearled,
A halo more saintly than that of the snow
That lies on the top of the world—
Often sung in the song, often writ on the page,
A halo of all the most dear:
The halo of white on the temple of age,
The same as the foam on the Beer.
And so, my professors and scientists all,
I figure the matter just so:
That white is a sign in the great or the small
Of the good things of life here below,
That old Mother Nature puts white on the crest
Of the things that she holds the most dear,
A halo of white on the things she loves best-
That’s why there is foam on the Beer.
Crescent City Brew Talk 