Poetry

The Passing Show

Elixir Vitae

Of life’s elixir I had writ, when sleep
(Pray Heaven it spared him who the writing read!)
Sealed upon my senses with so deep
A stupefaction that men thought me dead.
The centuries stole by with noiseless tread,
Like spectres in the twilight of my dream;
I saw mankind in dim procession sweep
Through life, oblivion at each extreme.
Meanwhile my beard, like Barbarossa’s growing,
Loaded my lap and o’er my knees was flowing.

The generations came with dance and song,
And each observed me curiously there.
Some asked: “Who was he?” Others in the throng
Replied: “A wicked monk who slept at prayer.”
Some said I was a saint, and some a bear⁠—
These all were women. So the young and gay,
Visibly wrinkling as they fared along,
Doddered at last on failing limbs away;
Though some, their footing in my beard entangled,
Fell into its abysses and were strangled.

At last a generation came that walked
More slowly forward to the common tomb,
Then altogether stopped. The women talked
Excitedly; the men, with eyes agloom
Looked darkly on them with a look of doom;
And one cried out: “We are immortal now⁠—
How need we these?” And a dread figure stalked,
Silent, with gleaming axe and shrouded brow,
And all men cried: “Decapitate the women,
Or soon there’ll be no room to stand or swim in!”

So (in my dream) each lovely head was chopped
From its fair shoulders, and but men alone
Were left in all the world. Birth being stopped,
Enough of room remained in every zone,
And Peace ascended Woman’s vacant throne.
Thus, life’s elixir being found (the quacks
Their bread-and-butter in it gladly sopped)
’Twas made worth having by the headsman’s axe.
Seeing which, I gave myself a hearty shaking,
And crumbled all to powder in the waking.

Convalescent

What! “Out of danger?” Can the slighted Dame
Or canting Pharisee no more defame?
Will Treachery caress my hand no more,
Nor Hatred lie alurk about my door?⁠—
Ingratitude, with benefits dismissed,
Not close the loaded palm to make a fist?
Will Envy henceforth not retaliate
For virtues it were vain to emulate?
Will Ignorance my knowledge fail to scout,
Not understanding what ’tis all about,
Yet feeling in its light so mean and small
That all his little soul is turned to gall?

What! “Out of danger?” Jealousy disarmed?
Greed from exaction magically charmed?
Ambition stayed from trampling whom it meets,
Like horses fugitive in crowded streets?
The Bigot, with his candle, book and bell,
Tongue-tied, unlunged and paralyzed as well?
The Critic righteously to justice haled,
His own ear to the post securely nailed⁠—
What most he dreads unable to inflict,
And powerless to hawk the faults he’s picked?
The liar choked upon his choicest lie,
And impotent alike to vilify
Or flatter for the gold of thrifty men
Who hate his person but employ his pen⁠—
Who love and loathe, respectively, the dirt
Belonging to his character and shirt?

What! “Out of danger?”⁠—Nature’s minions all,
Like hounds returning to the huntsman’s call,
Obedient to the unwelcome note
That stays them from the quarry’s bursting throat?⁠—
Famine and Pestilence and Earthquake dire,
Torrent and Tempest, Lightning, Frost and Fire,
The soulless Tiger and the mindless Snake,
The noxious Insect from the stagnant lake
These from their immemorial prey restrained,
Their fury baffled and their power chained?

I’m safe? Is that what the physician said?
What! “Out of danger?” Then, by Heaven, I’m dead!

At the Close of the Canvass

’Twas a Venerable Person, whom I met one Sunday morning,
All appareled as a prophet of a melancholy sect;
And in a Jeremaid of objurgatory warning
He lifted up his jodel to the following effect:

“O ye sanguinary statesmen, intermit your verbal tussles!
O ye editors and orators, consent to hear my lay!
Rest a little while the digital and maxillary muscles
And attend to what a Venerable Person has to say.

“Cease your writing, cease your shouting, cease your wild unearthly lying;
Cease to bandy such expressions as are never, never found
In the letter of a lover; cease “exposing” and “replying”⁠—
Let there be abated fury and a decrement of sound.

For to-morrow will be Monday and the fifth day of November⁠—
Only day of opportunity before the final rush.
Carpe diem! go conciliate each person who’s a member
Of the other party⁠—do it while you can without a blush.

“Lo! the time is close upon you when the madness of the season
Having howled itself to silence, like a Minnesota ’clone,
Will at last be superseded by the still, small voice of reason,
When the whelpage of your folly you would willingly disown.

“Ah, ’tis mournful to consider what remorses will be thronging,
With a consciousness of having been so ghastly indiscreet,
When by accident untoward two ex-gentlemen belonging
To the opposite political denominations meet!

“Yes, ’tis melancholy, truly, to forecast the fierce, unruly
Supersurging of their blushes, like the flushes upon high
When Aurora Borealis lights her circumpolar palace
And in customary manner sets her banner in the sky.

“Each will think: ‘This falsifier knows that I too am a liar.
Curse him for a son of Satan, all unholily compound!
Curse my leader for another! Curse that pelican, my mother!
Would to God that I when little in my victual had been drowned!’ ”

Then that venerable warner disappeared around a corner
And the season of unreason having also taken flight,
All the cheeks of men were burning like the skies to crimson turning
When Aurora Borealis fires her premises by night.

Novum Organum

In Bacon see the culminating prime
Of Anglo-Saxon intellect and crime.
He dies and Nature, settling his affairs,
Parts his endowments among us, his heirs:
To every one a pinch of brain for seed,
And, to develop it, a pinch of greed.
Each thrifty heir, to make the gift suffice,
Buries the talent to manure the vice.

Geotheos

As sweet as the look of a lover
Saluting the eyes of a maid,
That blossom to blue as the maid
Is ablush to the glances above her,
The sunshine is gilding the glade
And lifting the lark out of shade.

Sing therefore high praises, and therefore
Sing songs that are ancient as gold,
Of Earth in her garments of gold;
Nor ask of their meaning, nor wherefore
They charm as of yore, for behold!
The Earth is as fair as of old.

Sing songs of the pride of the mountains,
And songs of the strength of the seas,
And the fountains that fall to the seas
From the hands of the hills, and the fountains
That shine in the temples of trees,
In valleys of roses and bees.

Sing songs that are dreamy and tender,
Of slender Arabian palms,
And shadows that circle the palms,
Where caravans, veiled from the splendor,
Are kneeling in blossoms and balms,
In islands of infinite calms.

Barbaric, O Man, was thy runing
When mountains were stained as with wine
By the dawning of Time, and as wine
Were the seas, yet its echoes are crooning,
Achant in the gusty pine
And the pulse of the poet’s line.

Politics

That land full surely hastens to its end
Where public sycophants in homage bend
The populace to flatter, and repeat
The doubled echoes of its loud conceit.
Lowly their attitude but high their aim,
They creep to eminence through paths of shame,
Till fixed securely in the seats of pow’r,
The dupes they flattered they at last devour.

The Valley of Dry Bones

With crow bones all the land is white,
From the gates of morn to the gates of night.
Picked clean, they lie on the cumbered ground,
And the politician’s paunch is round;
And he strokes it down and across as he sings:
“I’ve eaten my fill of the legs and wings,
The neck, the back, the pontifical nose,
Breast, belly and gizzard, for everything goes.
The meat that’s dark (and there’s none that’s white)
Exceeded the need of my appetite,
But I’ve bravely stuck to the needful work
That a hungry domestic hog would shirk.
I’ve eaten the fowl that the Fates commend
To reluctant lips of the People’s Friend.
Rank unspeakably, bitter as gall,
Is the bird, but I’ve eaten it, feathers and all.
I’m a dutiful statesman, I am, although
I really don’t like a diet of crow.
So I’ve dined all alone in a furtive way,
But my platter I’ve cleaned every blessed day.
They say that I bolt; so I do⁠—my bird;
They say that I sulk, but they’ve widely erred!
O Lord! if my enemies only knew
How I’m full to the throat with the corvic stew
They’d open their ears to hear me profess
The faith compelled by the corvic stress,
(For, alas! necessity knows no law)
In the heavenly caucus⁠—‘Caw! Caw! Caw!’ ”

And that ornithanthropical person tried
By flapping his arms on the air to ride;
But I knew by the way that he clacked his bill
He was just the poor, featherless biped, Dave Hill.

Polyphemus

’Twas a sick young man with a face ungay
And an eye that was all alone;
And he shook his head in a hopeless way
As he sat on a roadside stone.

“O, ailing youth, what untoward fate
Has made the sun to set
On your mirth and eye?” “I’m constrained to state
I’m an ex-West Point cadet.

“ ’Twas at cannon-practice I got my hurt
And my present frame of mind;
For the gun went off with a double spurt⁠—
Before it, and also behind!

“How sad, how sad, that a fine young chap,
When studying how to kill,
Should meet with so terrible a mishap
Precluding eventual skill.

“Ah, woeful to think that a weapon made
For mowing down the foe
Should commit so dreadful an escapade
As to turn about to mow!”

No more he heeded while I condoled:
He was wandering in his mind;
His lonely eye unconsidered rolled,
And his views he thus defined:

“ ’Twas O for a breach of the peace⁠—’twas O
For an international brawl!
But a piece of the breech⁠—ah no, ah no,
I didn’t want that at all.”

In Defense

You may say, if you please, Johnny Bull, that our girls
Are crazy to marry your dukes and your earls;
But I’ve heard that the maids of your own little isle
Greet bachelor lords with a favoring smile.

Nay, titles, ’tis said in defense of our fair,
Are popular here because popular there;
And for them our ladies persistently go
Because ’tis exceedingly English, you know.

Whatever the motive, you’ll have to confess
The effort’s attended with easy success;
And⁠—pardon the freedom⁠—’tis thought, over here,
’Tis mortification you mask with a sneer.

It’s all very well, sir, your scorn to parade
Of the high nasal twang of the Yankee maid,
But, ah, to my lord when he dares to propose
No sound is so sweet as that “Yes” from the nose.

Ah, well, if the dukes and the earls and that lot
Can stand it (God succor them if they can not!)
Your commoners ought to assent, I am sure,
And what they’re not called on to suffer, endure.

“ ’Tis nothing but money?⁠—Your nobles are bought?”
As to that, I submit, it is commonly thought
That England’s a country not specially free
Of Croesi and (if you’ll allow it) Croesae.

You’ve many a widow and many a girl
With money to purchase a duke or an earl.
’Tis a very remarkable thing, you’ll agree,
When goods import buyers from over the sea.

Alas for the woman of Albion’s isle!
She may simper; as well as she can she may smile;
She may wear pantalettes and an air of repose⁠—
But my lord of the future will talk through his nose.

Goddess of Liberty! O thou
Whose tearless eyes behold the chain,
And look unmoved upon the slain,
Eternal peace upon thy brow⁠—

Before thy shrine the races press,
Thy perfect favor to implore⁠—
The proudest tyrant asks no more,
The ironed anarchist no less.

Thine altar-coals that touch the lips
Of prophets kindle, too, the brand
By Discord flung with wanton hand
Among the houses and the ships.

Upon thy tranquil front the star
Burns bleak and passionless and white,
Its cold inclemency of light
More dreadful than the shadows are.

Thy name we do not here invoke
Our civic rites to sanctify:
Enthroned in thy remoter sky,
Thou heedest not our broken yoke.

Thou carest not for such as we:
Our millions die to serve the still
And secret purpose of thy will.
They perish⁠—what is that to thee?

The light that fills the patriot’s tomb
Is not of thee. The shining crown
Compassionately offered down
To those who falter in the gloom,

And fall, and call upon thy name,
And die desiring⁠—’tis the sign
Of a diviner love than thine,
Rewarding with a richer fame.

To him alone let freemen cry
Who hears alike the victor’s shout,
The song of faith, the moan of doubt,
And bends him from his nearer sky.

God of my country and my race!
So greater than the gods of old⁠—
So fairer than the prophets told
Who dimly saw and feared thy face⁠—

Who didst but half reveal thy will
And gracious ends to their desire,
Behind the dawn’s advancing fire
Thy tender day-beam veiling still⁠—

To whom the unceasing suns belong,
And cause is one with consequence⁠—
To whose divine, inclusive sense
The moan is blended with the song⁠—

Whose laws, imperfect and unjust,
Thy just and perfect purpose serve:
The needle, howsoe’er it swerve,
Still warranting the sailor’s trust⁠—

God, lift thy hand and make us free
To crown the work thou hast designed.
O, strike away the chains that bind
Our souls to one idolatry!

The liberty thy love hath given
We thank thee for. We thank thee for
Our great dead fathers’ holy war
Wherein our manacles were riven.

We thank thee for the stronger stroke
Ourselves delivered and incurred
When⁠—thine incitement half unheard⁠—
The chains we riveted we broke.

We thank thee that beyond the sea
The people, growing ever wise,
Turn to the west their serious eyes
And dumbly strive to be as we.

As when the sun’s returning flame
Upon the Nileside statue shone,
And struck from the enchanted stone
The music of a mighty fame,

Let Man salute the rising day
Of Liberty, but not adore.
’Tis Opportunity⁠—no more⁠—
A useful, not a sacred, ray.

It bringeth good, it bringeth ill,
As he possessing shall elect.
He maketh it of none effect
Who walketh not within thy will.

Give thou more or less, as we
Shall serve the right or serve the wrong.
Confirm our freedom but so long
As we are worthy to be free.

But when (O, distant be the time!)
Majorities in passion draw
Insurgent swords to murder Law,
And all the land is red with crime;

Or⁠—nearer menace!⁠—when the band
Of feeble spirits cringe and plead
To the gigantic strength of Greed,
And fawn upon his iron hand;⁠—

Nay, when the steps to state are worn
In hollows by the feet of thieves,
And Mammon sits among the sheaves
And chuckles while the reapers mourn;

Then stay thy miracle!⁠—replace
The broken throne, repair the chain,
Restore the interrupted reign
And veil again thy patient face.

Lo! here upon the world’s extreme
We stand with lifted arms and dare
By thine eternal name to swear
Our country, which so fair we deem⁠—

Upon whose hills, a bannered throng,
The spirits of the sun display
Their flashing lances day by day
And hear the sea’s pacific song⁠—

Shall be so ruled in right and grace
That men shall say: “O, drive afield
The lawless eagle from the shield,
And call an angel to the place!”

Religion

Hassan Bedreddin, clad in rags, ill-shod,
Sought the great temple of the living God.
The worshippers arose and drove him forth,
And one in power beat him with a rod.

“Allah,” he cried, “thou seest what I got:
Thy servants bar me from the sacred spot.”
“Be comforted,” the Holy One replied;
“It is the only place where I am not.”

Two Socialists

Brand Whitlock sped from Hell through space,
To be remanded never⁠—
For having such a saintly face,
Set free forever,

With due apology. He came
To a world so base and bestial
No tongue infernal spake its name⁠—
No tongue celestial.

So foul it was that even He
Had cast it off Who made it:
Adrift in space, as on a sea,
No mooring stayed it.

That orb unclean, denied the aid
Of gravitation’s tether,
For centuries had blindly strayed⁠—
Lost altogether!

The sun disdainfully declined
To light the villain planet,
And the whole universe combined
To curse and ban it.

The Thief Impenitent, his grim
Recusance unabated,
Was its sole occupant: for him
It was created.

For when the wretch was newly dead
’Twas thought Hell had not ample
Restraints to check the local spread
Of his example,

Nor apparatus that insured
A proper pang; though lately
The woes that he at first endured
Had softened greatly.

But still one fierce, vain longing he
Suffered, nor could o’ercome it⁠—
The wish to sit in reverie
On Calvary’s summit.

Beneath that orb’s unjoyous sky
Brand Whitlock found the sinner.
Affinity!⁠—the outer eye
Lit by the inner.

Said Whitlock: “Here my stay is brief;
Take, brother, ere we sever,
Thy pardon. Be a better thief
Henceforth forever.

“God gives me power to condone
All scalawags’ offending,
For the sweet faith that I have shown
In their amending.”

When so he’d said with solemn grace,
As was that good soul’s habit,
The Thief directly into space
Sprang like a rabbit!

(He might have left at any time
Had freedom been his passion,
For God had long forgot his crime.
Crime was the fashion.)

The Saint, resuming soon his flight,
Met him through chaos floating.
Three stolen post-holes that poor wight
Was gaily toting.

A Morning Fancy

I drifted (or I seemed to) in a boat
Upon the surface of a shoreless sea
Whereon no ship nor anything did float,
Save only the frail bark supporting me;
And that⁠—it was so shadowy⁠—seemed to be
Almost from out the subtle azure wrought
Of the great ocean underneath its keel;
And all that blue profound appeared as naught
But thicker sky, translucent to reveal,
Miles down, whatever through its spaces glided,
Or at the bottom traveled or abided.

Great cities there I saw; of rich and poor
The palace and the hovel; mountains, vales,
Forest and field; the desert and the moor;
Tombs of the good and wise who’d lived in jails;
Seas of denser fluid, white with sails
Pushed at by currents moving here and there
And sensible to sight above the flat
Of that opaquer deep. Ah, strange and fair
The nether world that I was gazing at
With beating heart from that exalted level,
And⁠—lest I founder⁠—trembling like the devil!

The cities all were populous: men swarmed
In public places⁠—chattered, laughed and wept;
And savages their shining bodies warmed
At fires in primal woods. The wild beast leapt
Upon its prey and slew it as it slept.
Armies went forth to battle on the plain
So far, far down in that unfathomed deep
The living seemed as silent as the slain,
Nor even the widows could be heard to weep.
One might have thought their shaking was but laughter;
And, truly, most were married shortly after.

Above the wreckage of that silent fray
Strange fishes swam in circles, round and round⁠—
Black, double-finned; and once a little way
A bubble rose and burst without a sound
And a man tumbled out upon the ground.
Lord! ’twas an eerie thing to drift apace
On that pellucid sea, beneath black skies
And o’er the heads of an undrowning race;
And when I woke I said⁠—to her surprise
Who came with chocolate, for me to drink it:
“The atmosphere is deeper than you think it.”

From the regions of the Night,
Coming with recovered sight⁠—
From the spell of darkness free,
What will Danenhower see?

He will see when he arrives,
Doctors taking human lives.
He will see a learned judge
Whose decision will not budge
Till both litigants are fleeced
And his palm is duly greased.
Lawyers he will see who fight
Day by day and night by night;
Never both upon a side,
Though their fees they still divide.
Preachers he will see who teach
That it is divine to preach⁠—
That they fan a sacred fire
And are worthy of their hire.
He will see a trusted wife
Pride of some good husband’s life,
Enter at a certain door
And⁠—but he will see no more.
He will see Good Templars reel⁠—
See a prosecutor steal,
And a father beat his child.
He’ll perhaps see Oscar Wilde.

From the regions of the Night
Coming with recovered sight⁠—
From the bliss of blindness free,
That’s what Danenhower’ll see.

Genius

What is the thing called Genius? One has said
’Tis general ability directed
Into a special channel. One, instead,
Proffers a definition much respected
By toiling dullards: genius, he explains,
Is infinite capacity for taking pains.

Max Nordau, seeing he has not the thing,
Has solemnly decided, with Lombroso,
That genius is degeneracy. Ring
The curtain down⁠—the show is only so-so;
I’d rather see a dog-fight than sit out
This inconclusive definition-bout.

What, then, is genius? Faith, I’m only sure
That I am deep in doubt about the matter;
But this I think: of two in literature
He is the greater genius who’s the fatter.
’Twas in an age less prosperous that those
Were kings of thought who starved by verse and prose.

Lo! the lean rhapsodist whose soul surveys,
Ecstatic, his unprofitable vision,
Interprets it in cleanly speech; arrays
His jeweled words with scholarly precision!
Faith, he’s a dunce or he would never lack
The means to wedge his belly from his back.

’Twere passing easy to allay his pang
Had he the genius⁠—that’s to say, the insight
Commercial. If he would but sing in slang
He’d earn the wherewithal to make his skin tight.
Genius (let’s now define the word afresh)
Is the capacity to take on flesh.

Spirit of Letters, hail! Thy reign is Now;
Thy ministers are gentlemen that waddle⁠—
Children of light and leading who avow
They swap, for tallow, speech that’s not a model⁠—
For laminated kidney-suet trade
Unsavory words. You must be stout, George Ade.

Where the squalid town of Dae
Irks the comfortable sea,
Spreading webs to gather fish,
As for wealth we set a wish,
Dwelt a king by right divine,
Sprung from Adam’s royal line,
Town of Dae by the sea,
Divers kinds of kings there be.

Name nor fame had Picklepip:
Ne’er a soldier nor a ship
Bore his banners in the sun;
Naught knew he of kingly sport,
And he held his royal court
Under an inverted tun.
Love and roses, ages through,
Bloom where cot and trellis stand;
Never yet these blossoms grew⁠—
Never yet was room for two⁠—
In a cask upon the strand.
So it happened, as it ought,
That his simple schemes he wrought
Through the lagging summer’s day
In a solitary way.
So it happened, as was best,
That he took his nightly rest
With no dreadful weight of woe,
This way eyed and that way tressed,
Featured thus, and thus, and so,
Lying lead-like on a breast
By cares of state enough oppressed.
Yet in dreams his fancy rude
Claimed a lordly latitude.
Town of Dae by the sea,
Dreamers mate above their state
And waken back to their degree.

Once to cask himself away
He prepared at close of day.
As he tugged with swelling throat
At a most unkingly coat⁠—
Not to get it off, but on,
For the serving sun was gone⁠—
Passed a silk-appareled sprite
Toward her castle on the height,
Seized and set the garment right.
Turned the startled Picklepip⁠—
Splendid crimson cheek and lip!
Turned again to sneak away,
But she bade the villain stay,
Bade him thank her, which he did
With a speech that slipped and slid,
Sprawled and stumbled in its gait
As a dancer tries to skate.
Town of Dae by the sea,
In the face of silk and lace
Rags too bold should never be.

Lady Minnow cocked her head:
“Mister Picklepip,” she said,
“Do you ever think to wed?”
Town of Dae by the sea,
No fair lady ever made a
Wicked speech like that to me!

Wretched little Picklepip
Said he hadn’t any ship,
Any flocks at his command,
Nor to feed them any land;
Said he never in his life
Owned a mine to keep a wife.
But the guilty stammer so
That his meaning wouldn’t flow;
So he thought his aim to reach
By some figurative speech:
Said his Fate had been unkind
Had pursued him from behind
(How the mischief could it else?)
Came upon him unaware,
Caught him all too roughly⁠—there
Gushed the little lady’s glee
Like a gush of golden bells:
“Picklepip, why, that is me!”
Town of Dae by the sea,
Grammar’s for great scholars⁠—she
Loved the summer and the lea.

Stupid little Picklepip
Allowed the subtle hint to slip⁠—
Maundered on about the ship
That he did not chance to own;
Told this grievance o’er and o’er,
Knowing that she knew before;
Told her how he dwelt alone.
Lady Minnow, for reply,
Cut him off with “So do I!”
But she reddened at the fib;
Servitors had she, ad lib.
Town of Dae by the sea,
In her youth who speaks no truth
Ne’er shall young and honest be.

Witless little Picklepip
Manned again his mental ship
And veered her with a sudden shift.
Painted to the lady’s thought
How he wrestled and he wrought
Stoutly with the swimming drift
By the kindly river brought
From the mountain to the sea,
Fuel for the town of Dae.
Tedious tale for lady’s ear:
From her castle on the height,
She had watched her water-knight
Through the seasons of a year
Challenge more than met his view
And conquer better than he knew.
Now she shook her pretty pate
And stamped her foot⁠—’twas growing late:
“Mister Picklepip, when I
Drifting seaward pass you by;
When the waves my forehead kiss
And my tresses float above⁠—
Dead and drowned for lack of love⁠—
You’ll be sorry, sir, for this!”
And the silly creature cried⁠—
Feared, perchance, the rising tide.
Town of Dae by the sea,
Madam Adam, when she had ’em,
May have been as bad as she.

Fiat lux! Love’s lumination
Fell in floods of revelation!
Blinded brain by world aglare,
Sense of pulses in the air,
Sense of swooning and the beating
Of a voice somewhere repeating
Something indistinctly heard!
And the soul of Picklepip
Sprang upon his trembling lip,
But he spake no further word
Of the wealth he did not own;
In that moment had outgrown
Ship and mine and flock and land⁠—
Even his cask upon the strand.
Dropped a stricken star to earth,
Type of wealth and worldly worth.
Clomb the moon into the sky,
Type of love’s immensity!
Shaking silver seemed the sea,
Throne of God the town of Dae!
Town of Dae by the sea,
From above there cometh love,
Blessing all good souls that be.

An Anarchist

False to his art and to the high command
God laid upon him, Demagogo’s hand
Beats all in vain the harp he thrilled before:
It yields a jingle and it yields no more.
No more the strings beneath his finger-tips
Sing harmonies divine. No more his lips,
Touched with a living coal from sacred fires,
Lead the sweet chorus of the golden wires.
The voice is raucous and the phrases squeak;
They labor, they complain, they sweat, they reek!
The more the wayward, disobedient song
Errs from the right to advocate the wrong,
More diligently still the singer strums,
To drown the horrid sound, with all his thumbs.
Gods, what a spectacle! The angels lean
Out of high Heaven to view the sorry scene,
And Israfel, “whose heart-strings are a lute,”
Though now compassion makes their music mute,
Among the weeping company appears,
Pearls in his eyes and cotton in his ears.

An Offer of Marriage

Once I “dipt into the future far as human eye could see,”
And saw⁠—it was not Sandow, nor John Sullivan, but she⁠—
Emancipated Woman, who was weeping as she ran
Here and there for the discovery of Expurgated Man.
But the sun of Evolution ever rose and ever set,
And that tardiest of mortals hadn’t evoluted yet.
Hence the tears that she cascaded, hence the sighs that tore apart
All the tendinous connections of her indurated heart.
Cried Emancipated Woman, as she wearied of the search:
“In Advancing I have left myself distinctly in the lurch!
Seeking still a worthy partner, from the land of brutes and dudes
I have penetrated rashly into manless solitudes.
Now without a mate of any kind where am I?⁠—that’s to say,
Where shall I be to-morrow?⁠—where exert my rightful sway
And the purifying strength of my emancipated mind?
Can solitude be lifted up, vacuity refined?
Calling, calling from the shadows in the rear of my Advance⁠—
From the Region of Unprogress in the Dark Domain of Chance⁠—
Long I heard the Unevolvable beseeching my return
To share the degradation he’s reluctant to unlearn.
But I’ve held my way regardless, evoluting year by year
Till I’m what you now behold me⁠—or would if you were here⁠—
A condensed Emancipation and a Purifier proud
An Independent Entity appropriately loud!
Independent? Yes, in spirit, but (O, woeful, woeful state!)
Doomed to premature extinction by privation of a mate⁠—
To extinction or reversion, for Unexpurgated Man
Still awaits me in the backward if I sicken of the van.
O the horrible dilemma!⁠—to be odiously linked
With an Undeveloped Species, or become a Type Extinct!”
As Emancipated Woman wailed her sorrow to the air,
Stalking out of desolation came a being strange and rare⁠—
Plato’s Man!⁠—a biped, featherless from mandible to rump,
Its wings two quilless flippers and its tail a plumeless stump.
First it scratched and then it clucked, as if in hospitable terms
It invited her to banquet on imaginary worms.
Then it strutted up before her with a lifting of the head,
And in accents of affection and of sympathy it said:
“My estate is some’at ’umble, but I’m qualified to draw
Near the hymeneal altar and whack up my heart and claw
To Emancipated Anything as walks upon the earth;
And them things is at your service for whatever they are worth.
I’m sure to be congenial, marm, nor e’er deserve a scowl⁠—
I’m Emancipated Rooster, I am Expurgated Fowl!”

From the future and its wonders I withdrew my gaze, and then
Wrote this wild, unfestive lay of Evolutionated Hen.

Arma Virumque

“Ours is a Christian army”; so he said
A regiment of bangomen who led.
“And ours a Christian navy,” added he
Who sailed a thunder-junk upon the sea.
Better they know than men unwarlike do
What is an army, and a navy too.
Pray God there may be sent them by-and-by
The knowledge what a Christian is, and why.
For somewhat lamely the conception runs
Of a brass-buttoned Jesus firing guns.

On a Proposed Crematory

When a fair bridge is builded o’er the gulf
Between two cities, some ambitious fool,
Hot for distinction, pleads for earliest leave
To push his clumsy feet upon the span,
That men in after years may single him,
Saying: “Behold the fool who first went o’er!”
So be it when, as now the promise is,
Next summer sees the edifice complete
Which some do name a crematorium,
Within the vantage of whose greater maw’s
Quicker digestion we shall cheat the worm
And circumvent the handed mole who loves,
With tunnel, adit, drift and roomy stope,
To mine our mortal parts in all their dips
And spurs and angles. Let the fool stand forth
To link his name with this fair enterprise,
As first decarcassed by the flame. And if
With rival greedings for the fiery fame
They push in clamoring multitudes, or if
With unaccustomed modesty they all
Hold off, being something loth to qualify,
Let me select the fittest for the rite.
By heaven! I’ll make so warrantable, wise
And excellent censure of their true deserts,
And such a searching canvass of their claims,
That none shall bait the ballot. I’ll spread my choice
Upon the main and general of those
Who, moved of holy impulse, pulpit-born,
Protested ’twere a sacrilege to burn
God’s gracious images, designed to rot⁠—
And bellowed for the right of way for each
Distempered carrion through the water pipes.
With such a sturdy, boisterous exclaim
They did discharge themselves from their own throats
Against the splintered gates of audience
’Twere wholesomer to take them in at mouth
Than ear. These shall burn first: their ignoble
And seasoned substances⁠—trunks, legs and arms,
Blent indistinguishable in a mass,
Like winter-woven serpents in a pit,
None vantaged with unfair precedency
And all impartially alive⁠—shall serve
As fueling to fervor the retort
For after cineration of true men.

A Demand

You promised to paint me a picture,
Dear Mat,
And I was to pay you in rhyme.
Although I am loth to inflict your
Most easy of consciences, I’m
Of opinion that fibbing is awful,
And breaking a contract unlawful,
Indictable, too, as a crime,
A slight and all that.

If, Lady Unbountiful, any
Of that
By mortals called pity has part
In your obdurate soul⁠—if a penny
You care for the health of my heart,
By performing your undertaking
You’ll succor that organ from breaking⁠—
And spare it for some new smart,
As puss does a rat.

Do you think it is very becoming,
Dear Mat,
To deny me my rights evermore?
And⁠—bless you! if I begin summing
Your sins they will make a long score!
You never were generous, madam:
If you had been Eve and I Adam
You’d have given me naught but the core,
And little of that.

Had I been content with a Titian,
A cat
By Landseer, a meadow by Claude,
No doubt I’d have had your permission
To take it⁠—by purchase abroad.
But why should I sail o’er the ocean
For Landseers and Claudes? I’ve a notion
All’s bad that the critics belaud.
I wanted a Mat.

Presumption’s a sin, and I suffer
For that:
But still you did say that sometime,
If I’d pay you enough (here’s enougher⁠—
That’s more than enough) of rhyme
You’d paint me a picture. I pay you
Hereby in advance; and I pray you
Condone, while you can, your crime,
And send me a Mat.

But if you don’t do so I warn you,
Dear Mat,
I’ll raise such a clamor and cry
On Parnassus the Muses will scorn you
As mocker of poets and fly
With bitter complaints to Apollo:
“Her spirit is proud, her heart hollow,
Her beauty”⁠—they’ll hardly deny,
On second thought, that!

The Weather Wight

The way was long, the hill was steep,
My footing scarcely I could keep.

The night enshrouded me in gloom,
I heard the ocean’s distant boom⁠—

The trampling of the surges vast
Was borne upon the rising blast.

“God help the mariner,” I cried,
“Whose ship to-morrow braves the tide!”

Then from the impenetrable dark
A solemn voice made this remark:

“For this locality⁠—warm, bright;
Barometer unchanged; breeze light.”

“Unseen consoler-man,” I cried,
“Whoe’er you are, where’er abide,

“Thanks⁠—but my care is somewhat less
For Jack’s, than for my own, distress.

“Could I but find a friendly roof,
Small odds what weather were aloof.

“For he whose comfort is secure
Another’s pain can well endure.”

“The latch-string’s out,” the voice replied,
“And so’s the door⁠—jes’ step inside.”

Then through the darkness I discerned
A hovel, into which I turned.

Groping about beneath its thatch,
I struck my head and then a match.

A candle by that gleam betrayed
Soon lent paraffinaceous aid.

A pallid, bald and thin old man
I saw, who this complaint began:

“Through summer suns and winter snows
I sets observin’ of my toes.

“I rambles with increasin’ pain
The path of duty, but in vain.

“Rewards and honors pass me by⁠—
No Congress hears this raven cry!”

Filled with astonishment, I spoke:
“Thou ancient raven, why this croak?

“With observation of your toes
What Congress has to do, God knows!

“And swallow me if e’er I knew
That one could sit and ramble too!”

To answer me that ancient swain
Took up his parable again:

“Through winter snows and summer suns
A Weather Bureau here I runs.

“I calls the turn, and can declare
Jes’ when she’ll storm and when she’ll fair.

“Three times a day I sings out clear
The probs to all which wants to hear.

“Some weather stations run with light
Frivolity is seldom right.

“A scientist from times remote,
In Scienceville my birth is wrote.

“And when I h’ist the ‘rainy’ sign
Jes’ take your clo’es in off the line.”

“Not mine, O marvelous old man,
The methods of your art to scan,

“Yet here no instruments there be⁠—
Nor ’ometer nor ’scope I see.

“Did you (if questions you permit)
At the asylum leave your kit?”

That strange old man with motion rude
Rose to surprising altitude.

“Tools (and sarcazzems too) I scorns⁠—
I tells the weather by my corns.

“No doors and windows here you see⁠—
The wind and m’isture enters free.

“No fires nor lights, no wool nor fur
Here falsifies the tempercher.

“My corns unleathered I expose
To feel the rain’s foretellin’ throes.

“No stockin’ from their ears keeps out
The comin’ tempest’s warnin’ shout.

“Sich delicacy some has got
They know next summer’s to be hot.

“This here one says (for that he’s best):
‘Storm center passin’ to the west.’

“This feller’s vitals is transfixed
With frost for Janawary sixt’.

“One chap jes’ now is occypied
In fig’rin on next Fridy’s tide.

“I’ve shaved this cuss so thin and true
He’ll spot a fog in South Peru.

“Sech are my tools, which ne’er a swell
Observatory can excel.

“By long a-studyin’ their throbs
I catches onto all the probs.”

Much more, no doubt, he would have said,
But suddenly he turned and fled;

For in mine eye’s indignant green
Lay storms that he had not foreseen,

Concerning which, as Fear appeals,
To Speed, his toes had told his heels.

T. A. H.

Yes, he was that, or that, as you prefer⁠—
Did so-and-so, though, faith, it wasn’t all;
Lived like a fool, or a philosopher,
And had whatever’s needful to a fall.
As rough inflections on a planet merge
In the true bend of the gigantic sphere,
Nor mar the perfect circle of its verge,
So in the survey of his worth the small
Asperities of spirit disappear,
Lost in the grander curves of character.
He lately was hit hard: none knew but I
The strength and terror of that ghastly stroke⁠—
Not even herself. He uttered not a cry,
But set his teeth and made a revelry;
Drank like a devil⁠—staining sometimes red
The goblet’s edge; diced with his conscience; spread,
Like Sisyphus, a feast for Death, and spoke
His welcome in a tongue so long forgot
That even his ancient guest remembered not
What race had cursed him in it. Thus my friend
Still conjugating with each failing sense
The verb “to die” in every mood and tense,
Pursued his awful humor to the end.
When like a stormy dawn the crimson broke
From his white lips he smiled and mutely bled,
And, having meanly lived, is grandly dead.

My Monument

It is pleasant to think, as I’m watching my ink
A-drying along my paper,
That a monument fine will surely be mine
When death has extinguished my taper.

From each pitiless scribe of the critic tribe
Purged clean of all sentiments narrow,
A pebble will mark his respect for the stark
Stiff body that’s under the barrow.

Thus stone upon stone by reviewers thrown,
Will make my celebrity deathless.
O, I wish I could think, as I gaze at my ink,
They’d wait till my carcass is breathless.

Mad

O ye who push and fight
To hear a wanton sing⁠—
Who utter the delight
That has the bogus ring⁠—

O men mature in years,
In understanding young,
The membranes of whose ears
She tickles with her tongue⁠—

O wives and daughters sweet,
Who call it love of art
To kiss a woman’s feet
That crush a woman’s heart⁠—

O prudent dams and sires,
Your docile young who bring
To see how man admires
A sinner if she sing⁠—

O husbands who impart
To each assenting spouse
The lesson that shall start
The buds upon your brows⁠—

All whose applauding hands
Assist to rear the fame
That throws o’er all the lands
The shadow of its shame⁠—

Go drag her car!⁠—the mud
Through which its axle rolls
Is partly human blood
And partly human souls.

Mad, mad!⁠—your senses whirl
Like devils dancing free,
Because a strolling girl
Can hold the note high C.

For this the avenging rod
Of Heaven ye dare defy,
And tear the law that God
Thundered from Sinai!

For Coercion of Colombia

“The ships steam south
From the harbor mouth
In warlike, grim array!
They load the seas,
And on every breeze
I hear the brass bands play
As the squadrons steer away.

“From each foreign shore
They are coming o’er
The oceans big and small,
With cheering crews
And churning screws,
And guns and shot and all.
And Admirals that appal!

“In tropical seas
They are thick as bees.
Oh, ne’er on the Trojan strand
Was gathered a fleet
So hard to beat
As sails to that southern land.
’Tis terribly, terribly grand!

“O sailorman stout,
What’s it all about?
If you happen to know tell me.
That the foe has no chance
His troops to advance
To the field we all agree,
And the devil a ship has he.”

He shifted his quid,
The sailorman did,
To the starboard side of his face.
His trousers he hitched
As he rolled and pitched,
Maintaining his dubious place
With a certain maritime grace.

He looked at the sky
With a studious eye,
And this singular yarn he spun:
“When the wind’s sou’west
Every man’s possessed
Of a devil!⁠—no son-of-a-gun
Can tell what’s fit to be done.”

Perhaps it was naught
But a sailorman’s thought,
But I said to myself: “I’m blest
If I can’t mark down
A man of renown
Who is living in mental unrest
Where the wind is forever sou’west.”

A Teagoing Admiral

Once the Queen of Nether China
(So benign a Messalina!)
Said: “I’ll make a Naval Hero
Without fear⁠—O brave as Nero!
He shall dominate the ocean
By promotion, that’s my notion.
All my other sons of thunder
Then shall plunder vainly under
This Incomparable Person,
Interspersin’ lively cursin’
With their futile strife to shiver
Every river-pirate’s liver,
And to ascertain the measure
Of his treasure at their leisure.
For I’ll so arrange the looting
And the shooting and the hooting,
And the making frightful faces
(These grimaces are the bases
Of our tactics) that they never,
Howsoever brave and clever,
Shall have any kind of inning
In the skinning now beginning.
And I’ll see that in the story
Of the gory game of glory
The historian shall slight ’em
Or indict ’em⁠—maybe bite ’em.
But the Hero of my making,
Whom I’m aching to be waking
Into visible existence,
He shall distance these Philistines.
Fame’s loud trumpet⁠—he shall hear it.
Blown with spirit in his ear, it
Shall extol his birth and breeding,
His exceeding knack at leading
In a sanguinary sea fight,
Or a tea fight, or a flea fight,
Till he burst with admiration
Of his station in the nation!
Then while all the people mock him,
I’ll unfrock him! That will shock him.”
Thus the Queen of Nether China,
The Regina Mun-Kee-Shina,
Made to Naval Evolution
A Confucian contribution.

The Wooer

In Ballybazoo the young men woo
With the irresistible hob-nail shoe;
But in Ghargharoo lived a maiden who
Was pleased to remark that it wouldn’t do.

From Ghargharoo to Ballybazoo
This sternly dissenting maiden (who,
Etc.) went to reside⁠—a lass
With a cheek of steel and a brow of brass.

Then all the young men of Ballybazoo
Took turns in calling early to woo
(With the irresistible hob-nail shoe)
The beautiful maiden from Ghargharoo.

As each fond lover with ardor threw
His heel in her upturned face there flew
A rain of sparks that consumed his eyes,
Affecting his mind with a great surprise.

When all the young men had renounced their sight,
The metal-faced maiden she sat upright,
Remarking: “There’s nothing here to do⁠—
A dull, dull village is Ballybazoo.”

From Ballybazoo to Ghargharoo
The cheek-whole maiden her armament drew,
And her playmate lovers raised a hurroo
That saddened the sightless in Ballybazoo.

A stranger there was who cherished a heel
Of double-case-hardened, cold-rolled chrome steel!
And taking thought he decided to woo.
As ’twas his undoubted right to do.

To display his charms he removed his shoe,
And boarding her visage, began to woo.
And there in the gloaming, and not in vain,
The old, old story was told again.

It was long ago in the sainted past,
But traits long latent crop out at last;
And I know a live newspaper fellow who
Has ancestors buried in Ghargharoo.

Silhouettes of Orientals

The Sultan is a Muscleman;
He’s full of vim and whack,
And if you want a tussle man
His back.

Because he’s a Mahometan,
They think him mighty slow.
He’s quicker than a comet⁠—an
Auto!

He doesn’t often waste a fit,
But throws it where ’twill tell.
Blood? Yes, he likes the taste of it
Right well.

That angel, the Bulgarian,
Is just a bird of pray.
His soul’s as white as Parian,
They say.

His halo fits him pleasantly
And he has two great wings.
He tunes his harp, and presently
He sings:

“My shoulder inoffensively
Bears this dear little chip.
Pass on, wayfarer, pensively⁠—
Don’t flip.”

The thoughtful Moslem pins the chip
Fast with a dagger. Oh,
That angel-person’s sins of lip
Are low!

The Armenian is a sassy cur,
Cantankerous to boot,
Nor draws the line at massacre
And loot.

But when the Kurd in revelry
Slays, burns, imprisons, fines,
That bad gent to the devil he
Consigns.

My muse cannot exemplify
The Macedonian⁠—she
Refuses to attempt to fly
So free.

Old Philip, King of Macedon,
Is many ages dead;
We have this little gassy don
Instead.

Is he a Unitarian,
A Moslem, Buddhist, Jew⁠—
Or just a gowned barbarian
With trousers on his Mary Ann?
Don’t know⁠—do you?

Land of the Pilgrim’s Pride

I dreamed, and in my dream came one who said:
“Because thou art all sullen; and because
Thou sayest thou hast not for thy country, love;
Because thou dost begrudge the foolish blood
That in the far heroic days thou didst
(Or sayst thou didst) pour from thy riven vein
In testimony to thy patriot zeal;
Because thou seekest ever to promote
Distrust of the benign and wholesome rule
Of the Majority⁠—God’s Ministers;
Because thou hearest in the People’s voice
Naught but the mandate of an idiot will
Clamoring in the wilderness, but what
Or why it knoweth not; because all this
And much beside is true, I come⁠—”
“Forbear,” I cried, “to name thine errand⁠—all
Too well I know it for the sword, the scales,
The shrouded eyes (albeit methinks I catch
A twinkle now and then beneath the band)
Speak to my conscience of a traitor’s doom!
Strike, then, but hear. To westward, roaring up
From far beyond the earth’s vast curvature,
Come sounds of discord horrible⁠—the jar
And thunder of exploding bombs;
The crackle of the flames that eat away
The means of life of those who kindle them;
The shouts and curses of the robber mob.
Drunk with a sense of numbers⁠—like the wolves,
Numerically brave⁠—on ravin bent
And murder! Hear the moans of honest men,
With shameful by-name vilified, denied
The right to earn their bread, and with a blind,
Mad cruelty the devil would weep to see,
Beaten and tortured, even by the hands
Of the barbarian’s female and his whelps!
Meanwhile the coward rulers of the land
Prate of ‘the People’s wrongs.’ The coward press
(Thrifty withal to purse a double gain
By two-faced flattery) prates like a fool
Of the conservative and saving strength
Of Anglo-Saxon institutions, or
With magic words, as ‘freedom,’ and the like,
Would conjure order from inharmony.
The land is foul with crime, and none declares
Our shame and downfall. Even the women rise
And seeing the rack and ruin men have wrought,
Strip their weak bodies with a silly zeal
Something to save from the chaotic wreck;
And in the reek and sweat of their absurd
And awkward efforts, lose even what remained⁠—
Their own morality and men’s respect.
Therefore I say to you⁠—”
“Nay say no more,”
Cried she who came into my dream, “for thou
Dost wander. What, pray, has all this to do
With what thou’rt charged with?⁠—that thou dost not love⁠—
Such as it is⁠—thy country?”
“Faith, I would,
But ’tis infested by my countrymen!”
What she replied I know not, for a bomb,
Spitting and sputtering on my chamber floor.
Awoke me and I fled into the night.

A Single Termer

When Senator Foraker came to die
His features lit up with a glow,
And he said: “I am going to dwell on high
And the Democrats down below.

“I have kept the faith, I have fought the fight,
To the Trusts forever true.
With Elkins to lead, I have followed the light⁠—
Saint Peter, it’s up to you.”

Said Peter: “We strive to please in vain;
Many a soul coming here
Escapes to earth to be born again
And resume the old career.”

Here he opened the gate. “Although, no doubt,
This fellow’s a son of sin.
The devil himself can’t keep him out.
But I’ll lock the fine gentleman in.”

A Plague of Asses

Alas, we’ve fallen upon an evil time,
Our journals are all in a rash of rhyme.
Slang, “dialect,” the humor of the slum,
Done into stanzas by the rule of thumb,
The peasant word, the coarse, colloquial phrase,
Fitting the pauper thought that it conveys,
March to the meter-master’s “hep, hep, hep,”
With every second soldier out of step.
What sins of ours deserve this heavy curse?
Who taught our clowns ’tis easy to write verse
If neither poetry nor wit be deemed
A needful ornament, nor sense esteemed
A twin of sound? O rustics of the quill,
Ill-made by Nature, making others ill,
(Landlubbers on the sea of song a-sail
Uttering your fancies o’er the leeward rail)
Forgive the wicked wish I cannot choose
But entertain⁠—that, luckless, you may lose
Each one a thumb of the tormenting ten
Whereon you reckon syllables. Ah, then,
Restored to what it was before you learned
That grinning through horse-collars ever earned
Plaudits of rustics and enough of dollars
To pay the weekly rental of the collars,
With something over for the stomach’s throes,
Your ailing verse will turn to ailing prose.
Then joyous angels will look down and say:
“Behold! the ninety-nine that went astray
Return to where, from fields of noxious grass,
Sweet thistles beckon each repenting ass.”

In Cuba

Our Administration
Had made a new nation⁠—
As new as a nation could be.
A raven was flapping
Above it and snapping
His beak with a manifest glee.
“O raven, what is it you see
That causes the manifest glee?

“You can’t be designing
A programme of dining
On anything living and free.
You’re famous for dinners
That plain-speaking sinners
Condemn with the Terrible D!
(The word is abhorrent to me
That begins with the Terrible D.)

“Come down from your airy
Position and tarry
Awhile on this coconut tree,
And tell me what joying
You find in annoying
A nation so young and so free⁠—
Not dead in the slightest degree,
But lively and healthy as we.”

The raven, complying,
Said, solemnly eying
My edible parts from the tree:
“It isn’t to nations
I look for my rations
To any extent or degree.
They don’t fill the hollow in me
To an appreciable degree.

“Yet the seasons ensuing
Will see something doing
To heighten my manifest glee.
’Tis soldiers that mostly
Appeal to my ghostly
Unusual appetite, see?
They’re easy digesting to me
With my singular appetite, see?”

Then I hammered my forehead
To think of that horrid
Old bird with his appetite free,
A-sitting there, lacking
Compassion and cracking
His beak, on a coconut tree,
As if merely saying to me:
“Oh, what a fine coconut tree.”

I said somewhat later:
“Our Administrator
Of Freedom’s estate, O see!
His Administration
Presents us a ‘nation’
That’s spelled with the Terrible D!
And ‘nation’ is hateful to me
When led by the Terrible D.”

For a Certain Critic

Let lowly theme engage my humble pen⁠—
Stupidities of critics, not of men.
Be it mine once more the maunderings to trace
Of the expounders’ self-directed race⁠—
Their wire-drawn fancies, finically fine,
Of diligent vacuity the sign.
Let them in jargon of their trade rehearse
The moral meaning of the random verse
That runs spontaneous from the poet’s pen
To be half-blotted by ambitious men
Who hope with his their meaner names to link
By writing o’er it in another ink
The thoughts unreal which they think they think,
Until the mental eye in vain inspects
The hateful palimpsest to find the text.

The lark ascending heavenward, loud and long
Sings to the dawning day his wanton song.
The moaning dove, attentive to the sound,
Its hidden meaning hastens to expound:
Explains its principles, design⁠—in brief,
Pronounces it a parable of grief!
The bee, just pausing ere he daubs his thigh
With pollen from a hollyhock near by,
Declares he never heard in terms so just
The labor problem thoughtfully discussed!
The browsing ass looks up and clears his whistle
To say: “A monologue upon the thistle!”
Meanwhile the lark, descending, folds his wing
And innocently asks: “What!⁠—did I sing?”

O literary parasites! who thrive
Upon the fame of better men, derive
Your sustenance by suction, like a leech,
And, for you preach of them, think masters preach⁠—
Who find it half is profit, half delight,
To write about what you could never write⁠—
Consider, pray, how sharp had been the throes
Of famine and discomfiture in those
You write of if they had been critics, too,
And doomed to write of nothing but of you!

Lo! where the gaping crowd throngs yonder tent,
To see the lion resolutely bent!
The prosing showman who the beast displays
Grows rich and richer daily in its praise.
But how if, to attract the curious yeoman,
The lion owned the show and showed the showman?

To a Summer Poet

Yes, the Summer girl is flirting on the beach,
With a him.
And the damboy is a-climbing for the peach,
On the limb;
Yes, the bullfrog is a-croaking
And the dudelet is a-smoking
Cigarettes;
And the hackman is a-hacking
And the showman is a-cracking
Up his pets;
Yes, the Jersey ’skeeter flits along the shore
And the snapdog⁠—we have heard it o’er and o’er;
Yes, my poet,
Well we know it⁠—
Know the spooners how they spoon
In the bright
Dollar light
Of the country tavern moon;
Yes, the caterpillars fall
From the trees (we know it all),
And with beetles all the shelves
Are alive.
Please unbuttonhole us⁠—O,
Have the grace to let us go,
For we know
How you Summer poets thrive,
By the recapitulation
And insistent iteration
Of the wondrous doings incident to Life Among Ourselves!
So, I pray you stop the fervor and the fuss.
For you, poor human linnet,
There’s a half a living in it,
But there’s not a copper cent in it for us!

Arthur McEwen

Posterity with all its eyes
Will come and view him where he lies.
Then, turning from the scene away
With a concerted shrug, will say:
“H’m, ‘Scarabaeus Sisyphus’⁠—
What interest has that to us?
We can’t admire at all, at all,
A tumble-bug without its ball.”
And then a sage will rise and say:
“Good friends, you err⁠—turn back, I pray:
This freak that you unwisely shun
Is bug and ball rolled into one.”

Charles and Peter

Ere Gabriel’s note to silence died
All graves of men were gaping wide.

Then Charles A. Dana, of The Sun
Rose slowly from the deepest one.

“The dead in Christ rise first, ’tis writ,”
Quoth he⁠—“ick, bick, ban, doe⁠—I’m It!”

(His headstone, footstone, counted slow,
Were “ick” and “bick,” he “ban” and “doe”:

Of beating Nick the subtle art
Was part of his immortal part.)

Then straight to Heaven he took his flight,
Arriving at the Gates of Light.

There Warden Peter, in the throes
Of sleep, lay roaring in the nose.

“Get up, you sluggard!” Dana cried⁠—
“I’ve an engagement there inside.”

The Saint arose and scratched his head.
“I recollect your face,” he said.

“(And, pardon me, ’tis rather hard),
But⁠—” Dana handed him a card.

“Ah, yes, I now remember⁠—bless
My soul, how dull I am I⁠—yes, yes,

“Walk in. But I must tell you this:
We’ve nothing better here than bliss.

“We’ve rest and comfort, though, and peace.”
“H’m⁠—puddles,” Dana said, “for geese.

“Have you in Heaven no Hell?” “Why, no,”
Said Peter, “nor, in truth, below.

“ ’Tis not included in our scheme⁠—
’Tis but a preacher’s idle dream.”

The great man slowly moved away.
“I’ll call,” he said, “another day.

“On earth I played it, o’er and o’er,
And Heaven without it were a bore.”

“O, stuff!⁠—come in. You’ll make,” said Pete,
“A hell where’er you set your feet.”

Contemplation

I muse upon the distant town
In many a dreamy mood.
Above my head the sunbeams crown
The graveyard’s giant rood.
The lupin blooms among the tombs,
The quail recalls her brood.

Ah, good it is to sit and trace
The shadow of the cross;
It moves so still from place to place
O’er marble, bronze and moss;
With graves to mark upon its arc
Our time’s eternal loss.

And sweet it is to watch the bee
That revels in the roses,
And sense the fragrance floating free
On every breeze that dozes
Upon the mound, where, safe and sound,
Mine enemy reposes.

The Golden Age

Long ago the world was finer⁠—
Why it failed I do not know:
All the virtues were diviner;
Robber, miser, and maligner
Had not been created. No,
Truth and honor flourished, though.
Long ago.

Sages in procession stalking
Moved majestic to and fro,
And each lowly mortal walking
In their shadow stilled his talking,
Heeding the sonorous flow
Of their wisdom, loud or low,
Long ago.

Angel Woman, younger, fairer
Far than she that now we know,
Gave men meeting with a rarer
Grace. No graybeard cried, “Beware her
Tongue and temper!” She was slow
To wrath. I tell you that was so,
Long ago.

Ah, the miracle of morning.
Setting all the world aglow
Like a smile of light adorning
God’s own face, held no forewarning
Of the tempest that would blow⁠—
Sign and prophecy of woe,
Long ago.

Hope from every hilltop beckoned
To the happy throngs below;
And they confidently reckoned
On a hero every second.
Best of all that goodly show,
I was but a laddie⁠—O,
So long ago!

A Prophet of Peace

“The world is young, perverse, and bad,
The virtues all are wanting;
The gods are dead and men are mad
And wickedness is haunting
The human heart, an honored guest,
As robbers of the night infest
A wayside inn in Camilhad.

“Hate walks the earth all unafraid,
And neighbor murders neighbor;
Greed draws on Greed the battle-blade,
And Labor strangles Labor.
The widow and the orphan cry
For bread while benefactors ply
Unlashed by law, their dreadful trade.

“King, president, and patriot
Serve their accurst ambition;
The soldier and the sans-culottes,
The priest and politician,
Are blowing with impested breath
The coals of war that sparkle death.
Peace, righteousness, and love are not.

“But I shall live to see the day
Whose golden dawn is breaking!
The reign of war no more shall lay
Our dust, nor hearts be aching.
Lo! all mankind in brotherhood
Shall study only to be good,
And fling the sword of self away!”

So chanted one inspired and fain
His message to deliver
To men who toiled upon the plain
And bled along the river,
And all the world was foul with crime!
This prophet lived about the time
That Lamech’s wife bare Tubal-cain.

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!

The Word-Way in Panama

I dreamed I sailed along a tropic shore,
The Line behind me and the Star before.
A savage coast, it was, of wood and fen,
And monkeys gabbled there, instead of men.
Once, as the blessed sun his head upraised,
On what a wondrous spectacle he gazed!

A mile away upon the starboard beam
Fell into ocean a deep sluggish stream,
Yet not a drop of water passed its mouth⁠—
Thy way, Kentucky, glory of the South!
Words, words alone it “uttered to the day,”
As if from Kansas it had gone astray.
Yea, disemboguing grandly on the beach,
Flowed thickly, viscidly, the parts of speech!
Some, by their dead, incalculable weight
Held to the bottom’ of that turbid strait,
Slid seaward fathoms deep, nor saw the light
That shone above their everlasting night!
Some, such their levity, remained atop.
Frolicked and flashed⁠—did everything but stop.
Others, too grave to float, too light to sink,
Forever rolled and tumbled on the brink⁠—
Spread north and south along the cumbered strand,
And babbled ever between sea and land.

Ah! ’twas a famous spectacle indeed,
This wordy welter!⁠—verbs that disagreed
With nominatives; prepositions all
Too weak to hold the objective case in thrall;
Adverbs and adjectives disparted quite
From parent-words and in a woeful plight
Of orphanage; conjunctions, interjections
With truly anarchistic predilections;
And pronouns which⁠—a gutter-blooded swarm!⁠—
Denied their antecedents in their form!

Greatly I marveled whence this language came⁠—
No “well of English” like it could I name,
Nor think how such a stream, however free
Its flow, could wear a channel to the sea!

As Hudson bears his never-failing fleet
Of dead dogs, verdant, poddy and unsweet,
To pile themselves upon the Jersey shore,
Or in Sargasso’s Sea rest evermore,
So poured this torrent through its delta’s breaches,
And all these parts of speech were parts of speeches!⁠—
All gushing from that word-way like a flood
Of swearing tomcats militant in mud!
They leapt, they smelled, they clamored, like a line
Of pagans faring to a sacred shrine!
“No more my heart the dismal din sustained”
(See Homer⁠—Pope’s translation) for it strained
My senses⁠—this uncouth, in fragrant, hoarse
“Fine flow of language” from its Northern source.
Cold drops of terror from my body broke!⁠—
I ’bouted ship, and from my dream awoke.

The Jack of Clubs

Jerome, you are a mighty famous man⁠—
District Attorney, I believe they call you.
Some shout your praise as loudly as they can,
And some, apparently, just live to maul you.
But whether good or ill repute befall you,
Your critics can’t deny that, as a rule,
You take it standing⁠—though the wits among
Them say you stand, as does the singing mule,
The better to perform your feats of lung.
And, truly from the dawning to the gloaming,
When in good voice, you’re usually Jeroming.

O, well, we must have music⁠—’tis a need,
Like Ibsen, Shaw or the “Edenic diet”;
Though sometimes silence is desired⁠—indeed,
There’s much that may be said in praise of quiet,
And possibly you might do worse than try it.
’Twere better, anyhow, than fool advice
To the police to club their fellow men,
Too sore already. Sir, it is not nice
To free your snouty virtues from the pen⁠—
Unless, as once in Gadara, they’ll scamper
Down a steep place to where ’tis greatly damper.

Jerome, the best of us are those who care
To hide from view the monsters that inhabit
Our hearts, and when too closely questioned swear
We’ve nothing fiercer than a sheep or rabbit.
Seeing an opportunity, you grab it
And lifting up the curtain, show the whole
Menagerie of thoughts and feelings which
Infest the secret places of your soul
Like newts and water-puppies in a ditch.
O, great reformer! hide from observation
The unpleasing spectacle of Reformation.

A Naval Method

Captain Purvis, for aught we know,
Never slew a Filipino;
Played exceeding well at polo,
But invited not the bolo.
Though his form was big and burly,
And his fist was hard and knurly,
And his cocktail hour came early,
Yet he was devoid of thirst
For the blood of the accurst.
Inconsiderate Tagallo
(Seas of gore, however shallow,
He regarded very lightly,
As inutile and unsightly);
So he did not much frequent
That insurrectionary gent.

Captain Purvis went a-scouting
(Truth to tell, he took an outing)⁠—
Found a Filipino sleeping,
Bound and took him into keeping.
Calling Sergeant-Major Gump,
They conveyed him to a pump,
Laid him on his back beneath,
With his tongue between his teeth.
Said the captain: “We’ll not thump him,
But he is a spy⁠—we’ll pump him.
That’s our duty; information,
Secrets useful to the nation,
We’ll wring from him. Tell me, sir,
Tell me truly, why a cur
Wags its tail⁠—and, furthermore.
When a door Is not a door.”

But that person obstinacious
Answered, with a look ungracious,
That he’d see them (he was witty)
Both in Helfurst⁠—that’s a city
In Silesia, I suppose,
Where no proper person goes.
So they pumped him full of water⁠—
Son of Temperance, or Daughter,
Ne’er was half so full as that,
Nor any poison-fevered rat
Trying with a fervor frantic
To abolish the Atlantic.
Yes, that Filipino bloated
Till his snowry liver floated
Like a lily on a pond.
And his soul to the Beyond
Drifted on the strong, full tide,
“By word of mouth,” from his inside.

Captain Purvis being duly
Tried, the President said: “Truly,
He’s a water-warrior; he
Would more fitly serve at sea.”
So the Navy broke his fall⁠—
Rearest-Admiral of all!
By his ironclad desk he’s sitting,
Sometimes writing, sometimes knitting,
For he’s Chief (and that’s enough)
Of the Bureau of Plum Duff.

Another Aspirant

George Dewey, dear, I did not think that you⁠—
So very married and so happy, too⁠—
Would go philandering with another girl
And give your gay mustache a fetching curl
And set your cap⁠—I should say your cocked hat⁠—
At Miss Columbia the like o’ that.
Pray what can you expect to get by throwing
Sheep’s eyes at one so very, very knowing?

See how she served McKinley! All his life
He wooed her for his morganatic wife,
Swore that he loved her better than his soul
(I’m half inclined to think, upon the whole,
She better did deserve his love) then vowed
He’d marry her alive, or even aloud!
What did she? Ere his breath he could recover
She heartlessly accepted that poor lover!

There’s William Bryan of the silver tongue,
Old in ambition, in discretion young⁠—
He courts her with the song, the dance, the lute,
But knows how suitors feel who do not suit.
And Teddy Roosevelt, plucking from its sheath
The weapon that he wears behind his teeth,
Endeavors in his simple, soldier fashion,
But all in vain, to touch her heart by slashin’.

Beware, my web-foot friend, beware her wiles:
Fly from her sighs and disregard her smiles.
She’s no fool mermaid with a comb and glass,
But Satan’s daughter with a breast of brass.
Put out your prow to sea again⁠—but hold!
If Bryan and McKinley, all too bold,
Show up along the beach with little Teddy⁠—
Well, Dewey, you may fire when you are ready.

A Learner

I do not think you rightly understand:
My foolish tongue imperfectly has caught
The trick of loving words, nor, as it ought,
Serves the sweet purpose of the heart’s command.
Dear, I’m untraveled in the golden land
Of love, and in its language all untaught,
Like some poor mariner by tempest brought
’Mongst alien races to a foreign strand.
So, pretty native, bear with me until
My simple wants I rightly can avow⁠—
My will to serve you with my men and ships.
For lo! already I’ve some little skill
In the strange tongue. Ask me to kiss you now⁠—
I’ll read the riddle ere it leaves your lips!

To Bridget

Have ye heard what the news is, me darlint?
The Fenians have threatened the Pope!
But, begorra, I think there’s a snarl in’t
That’s twisted it up like a rope.
From a kink in the telescope.
For the news, ye must know, Biddy, reaches
This counthry by means of a wire;
And sometimes the heat o’ the speeches
Just warrups it up like a fire.
Faith! who but the Divil would bother
The likes o’ the Howly Father?

And the Divil is in it, I’m fearin’,
When a gintleman’s called on to chuse
Betwixt Howly Church and Ould Erin⁠—
The shamrock and harp to refuse,
Or be like the murtherin’ Jews.
Och! Biddy, me mind it is troublin’
To know where me body’s at home⁠—
With half o’ me sowl there in Dublin
And t’other half over in Rome!
Bedad, there’s a shplit in the party
Of the name of O’Malley McCarty!

After Tennyson

You ask me why, though ill at ease,
Within this region I subsist,
Where honor’s dead, and law is hissed,
And all men pillage as they please.

It is the land where freemen kill
In warm debate their party foes;
The land where judges come to blows
And speak the things that make us ill;

A land of base expedient;
A land where gold can justice drown;
Where Freedom’s chains are handed down
From President to President;

Where factions wrangle for the bread
Of honest men; where, fearing naught,
Accurst monopolies have caught
The people in the nets they spread;

Where branded convicts execute
The laws that in a better time
They broke, and every kind of crime
Stalks unashamed and resolute.

Should honor e’er possess the land,
And patriots control the State,
And Justice rise, divine with hate,
To choke the politician band,

O waft me from the harbor forth.
Wild winds. I’ll see Alaska’s sky.
Here ’twill have grown too warm, and I
Will run for office in the North.

To My Bird

If I were screaming in a cage,
Parrot mine, parrot mine,
And you were rhyming on this page,
Parrot mine,
I’d try to shriek a fresher bit
Of wisdom to excite your wit,
Parrot mine.

All you have said is nothing new,
Parrot mine, parrot mine,
By Jove, I taught it all to you,
Parrot mine.
While you nor can, nor could, nor might
Have thought what I could care to write,
Parrot mine.

Your life in order to maintain,
Parrot mine, parrot mine,
You daily dine upon my brain,
Parrot mine.
My mind, a torn and mangled wreck,
Is disappearing down your neck,
Parrot mine.

Well, be it so: present your bill,
Parrot mine, parrot mine,
And on my virtues feast your fill,
Parrot mine.
My vices, though, will disagree
With you, my pet. They do with me.
Parrot mine.

Business

Two villains of the highest rank
Set out one night to rob a bank.
They found the building, looked it o’er,
Each window noted, tried each door,
Scanned carefully the lidded hole
For minstrels to cascade the coal⁠—
In short, examined five-and-twenty
Shortcuts from poverty to plenty.
But all were sealed, they saw full soon,
Against the minions of the moon.
“Enough,” said one: “I’m satisfied.”
The other, smiling fair and wide,
Said: “I’m as highly pleased as you:
No burglar ever can get through.
Fate surely prospers our design⁠—
The booty all is yours and mine.”
So, full of hope, the following day
To the exchange they took their way
And bought, with manner free and frank,
Some stock of that devoted bank;
And they became, inside the year,
One President and one Cashier.
Their crime I can no further trace⁠—
The means of safety to embrace,
I overdrew and left the place.

A Possibility

If the wicked gods were willing
(Pray it never may be true!)
That a universal chilling
Should ensue
Of the sentiment of loving⁠—
If they made a great undoing
Of the plan of turtle-doving,
Then farewell all poet-lore,
Evermore.
If there were no more of billing
There would be no more of cooing
And we all should be but owls⁠—
Lonely fowls
Blinking wonderfully wise,
With our great round eyes⁠—
Sitting singly in the gloaming and no longer two and two,
As unwilling to be wedded as unpracticed how to woo;
With regard to being mated,
Asking still with aggravated
Ungrammatical acerbity: “To who? To who?”

Delay responsible? Why, then; my friend,
Impeach Delay and you will make an end.
Thrust vile Delay in jail and let it rot
For doing all the things that it should not.
Put not good-natured judges under bond,
But make Delay in damages respond.
Minos, Aeacus, Rhadamanthus, rolled
Into one pitiless, unsmiling scold⁠—
Unsparing censor, be your thongs uncurled
To “lash the rascals naked through the world.”
The rascals? Nay, Rascality’s the thing
Above whose back your knotted scourges sing.
Your satire, truly, like a razor keen,
“Wounds with a touch that’s scarcely felt or seen;”
For naught that you assail with falchion free
Has either nerves to feel or eyes to see.
Against abstractions evermore you charge:
You hack no helmet and you need no targe.
That wickedness is wrong and sin a vice,
That wrong’s not right, nor foulness ever nice,
Fearless affirm. All consequences dare:
Smite the offense and the offender spare.
When Ananias and Sapphira lied
Falsehood, had you been there, had surely died.
When money-changers in the Temple sat,
At money-changing you’d have whirled the “cat”
(That John-the-Baptist of the modern pen)
And all the brokers would have cried amen!

Good friend, if any judge deserve your blame
Have you no courage, or has he no name?
Upon his method will you wreak your wrath,
Himself all unmolested in his path?
Fall to! fall to!⁠—your club no longer draw
To beat the air or flail a man of straw.
Scorn to do justice like the Saxon thrall
Who cuffed the offender’s shadow on a wall.
Let rascals in the flesh attest your zeal⁠—
Knocked on the mazzard or tripped up at heel!

We know that judges are corrupt. We know
That crimes are lively and that laws are slow.
We know that lawyers lie and doctors slay;
That priests and preachers are but birds of pray;
That merchants cheat and journalists for gold
Flatter the vicious while at vice they scold.
’Tis all familiar as the simple lore
That two policemen and two thieves make four.

But since, while some are wicked some are good,
(As trees may differ though they all are wood)
Names, here and there, to show whose head is hit,
The bad would sentence and the good acquit.
In sparing everybody none you spare:
Rebukes most personal are least unfair.
To fire at random if you still prefer,
And swear at Dog but never kick a cur,
Permit me yet one ultimate appeal
To something that you understand and feel:
Let thrift and vanity your heart persuade⁠—
You might be read if you would learn your trade.

Good brother cynics (you have doubtless guessed
Not one of you but all are here addressed)
Remember this: the shaft that seeks a heart
Draws all eyes after it; an idle dart
Shot at some shadow flutters o’er the green,
Its flight unheeded and its fall unseen.

“The Whole World Kin”

“Liars for witnesses; for lawyers brutes
Willing to lose their souls to win their suits;
Cowards for jurors, and for judge a clown
Who ne’er took up the law, yet lays it down;
Justice denied, authority abused,
And the one blameless person the accused⁠—
Thy courts, my country, all these dreadful years,
Move fools to laughter and the wise to tears.”

So moaned an alien from beyond the foam.
Come here, my lad, I think you’ll feel at home.

“What is this I see, what is this I see
In this year of our Lord 3003?
What ruins are spread in confusion wide
Over hill and plain by Potomac’s side?”

“These, traveler, these are the leveled stones
Attesting the prowess of Mother Jones.”

“O plowman, I never in history grew
To the high attainments of Smith Carew,
Whose noble book, ‘The Decline and Fall
Of America,’ holds the respect of all.
Of Mother Jones I often have heard,
But thought⁠—pray pardon if I have erred⁠—
That the ancient lady became renowned
By embroidering cats on a velvet ground.”

“Your error is wide, remote, extreme:
Not the needle’s shine, but the sabre’s gleam
Delighted of old her heroic soul
And made her unloved of the Lords of Coal.
In that distant day when the miner ‘rose,’
And to spite his countenance severed his nose,
And owners permitted each mine of the trust
To fill up with water to lay his dust,
She marshaled the women, with sabre and gun,
And marched with banners on Washington.”

“I see, I see in these ruins gray
Through which you are urging your plowshare gay
The work of their hands, slender and white,
That plied the pick and the crowbar bright.”

“The cannon, my friend⁠—but no harm was done,
For before the city was overrun
By the warrior-dames of that rebel rout
The politicians had cleaned it out,
And the stones that about the plain they spread
Were served to the poor when they asked for bread.”

“O affable plowman, I’d fain admire
Your tale, but, alas, I’m myself a liar!
Besides, I’ve a better one, which, mayhap,
You’d like to be hearing.”
“Giddap, giddap!”

The Hesitating Veteran

When I was young and full of faith
And other fads that youngsters cherish
A cry rose as of one that saith
With emphasis: “Help or I perish!”
’Twas heard in all the land, and men
The sound were each to each repeating.
It made my heart beat faster then
Than any heart can now be beating.

For the world is old and the world is gray⁠—
Grown prudent and, I think, more witty.
She’s cut her wisdom teeth, they say,
And doesn’t now go in for Pity.
Besides, the melancholy cry
Was that of one, ’tis now conceded,
Whose plight no one beneath the sky
Felt half so poignantly as he did.

Moreover, he was black. And yet
That sentimental generation
With an austere compassion set
Its face and faith to the occasion.
Then there were hate and strife to spare,
And various hard knocks a-plenty;
And I (’twas more than my true share,
I must confess) took five-and-twenty.

That all is over now⁠—the reign
Of love and trade stills all dissensions,
And the clear heavens arch again
Above a land of peace and pensions.
The black chap⁠—at the last we gave
Him everything that he had cried for,
Though many white chaps in the grave
’Twould puzzle to say what they died for.

I hope he’s better off⁠—I trust
That his society and his master’s
Are worth the price we paid, and must
Continue paying, in disasters;
But sometimes doubts press thronging round
(’Tis mostly when my hurts are aching)
If war for Union was a sound
And profitable undertaking.

’Tis said they mean to take away
The Negro’s vote for he’s unlettered.
’Tis true he sits in darkness day
And night, as formerly, when fettered;
But pray observe⁠—howe’er he vote
To whatsoever party turning,
He’ll be with gentlemen of note
And wealth and consequence and learning.

With saints and sages on each side,
How could a fool through lack of knowledge,
Vote wrong? If learning is no guide
Why ought one to have been in college?
O Son of Day, O Son of Night!
What are your preferences made of?
I know not which of you is right,
Nor which to be the more afraid of.

The world is old and the world is bad,
And creaks and grinds upon its axis;
And man’s an ape and the gods are mad!⁠—
There’s nothing sure, not even our taxes.
No mortal man can Truth restore,
Or say where she is to be sought for.
I know what uniform I wore⁠—
O, that I knew which side I fought for!

A Year’s “Casualties”

Slain as they lay by the secret, slow,
Pitiless hand of an unseen foe,
Two score thousand old soldiers have crossed
The river to join the loved and lost.
In the space of a year their spirits fled,
Silent and white, to the camp of the dead.

One after one, they fall asleep
And the pension agents awake to weep,
And orphaned statesmen are loud in their wail
As the souls flit by on the evening gale.
O Father of Battles, pray give us release
From the horrors of peace, the horrors of peace!

Inspiration

O hoary sculptor, stay thy hand:
I fain would view the lettered stone.
What carvest thou?⁠—perchance some grand
And solemn fancy all thine own.
For oft to know the fitting word
Some humble worker God permits.
“Jain Ann Meginnis,
Agid 3rd.
He givith His beluved fits.”

To-Day

I saw a man who knelt in prayer,
And heard him say:
“I’ll lay my inmost spirit bare
To-day.

“Lord, for to-morrow and its need
I do not pray;
Let me upon my neighbor feed
To-day.

“Let me my duty duly shirk
And run away
From any form or phase of work
To-day.

“From Thy commands exempted still,
Let me obey
The promptings of my private will
To-day.

“Let me no word profane, no lie
Unthinking say
If anyone is standing by
To-day.

“My secret sins and vices grave
Let none betray;
The scoffer’s jeers I do not crave
To-day.

“And if to-day my fortune all
Should ebb away
Help me on other men’s to fall
To-day.

“So, for to-morrow and its mite
I do not pray;
Just give me everything in sight
To-day.”

I cried: “Amen!” He rose and ran
Like oil away.
I said: “I’ve seen an honest man
To-day.”

An Alibi

A famous journalist, who long
Had told the great unheaded throng
Whate’er they thought, by day or night,
Was true as Holy Writ, and right,
Was caught in⁠—well, on second thought,
It is enough that he was caught,
And, thrown into a jail, became
The fuel of a public flame.
“Vox populi vox Dei,” said
The jailer. Inxling bent his head
Without remark: that motto good
In bold-faced type had always stood
Above the columns where his pen
Had rioted in praise of men
And all they said⁠—provided he
Was sure they mostly did agree.
Meanwhile a sharp and bitter strife
To take, or save, the culprit’s life
Or liberty (which, I suppose,
Was much the same to him) arose
Outside. The journal that his pen
Adorned denounced his crime⁠—but then
Its editor in secret tried
To have the indictment set aside.
The opposition papers swore
His father was a rogue before,
And all his wife’s relations were
Like him and similar to her.
They begged their readers to subscribe
A dollar each to make a bribe
That any Judge would feel was large
Enough to prove the gravest charge⁠—
Unless, it might be, the Defense
Put up superior evidence.
The law’s traditional delay
Was all too short: the trial day
Dawned red and menacing. The Judge
Sat on the Bench and wouldn’t budge,
And all the motions counsel made
Could not move him⁠—and there he stayed.
“The case must now proceed,” he said,
“While I am just, in heart and head.
It happens⁠—as, indeed, it ought⁠—
Both sides with equal sums have bought
My favor: I can try the cause
Impartially.” (Prolonged applause.)

The prisoner was now arraigned
And said that he was greatly pained
To be suspected⁠—he, whose pen
Had charged so many other men
With crimes and misdemeanors! “Why,”
He said, a tear in either eye,
“If men who live by crying out
‘Stop thief!’ are not themselves from doubt
Of their integrity exempt
Let all forego the vain attempt
To make a reputation! Sir,
I’m innocent, and I demur.”
Whereat a thousand voices cried
That he indubitably lied⁠—
Vox populi as loudly roared
As bull by picadores gored,
In his own coin receiving pay
To make a Spanish holiday.
The jury⁠—twelve good men and true⁠—
Were then sworn in to see it through,
And each made solemn oath that he
As any babe unborn was free
From prejudice, opinion, thought,
Respectability, brains⁠—aught
That could disqualify; and some
Explained that they were deaf and dumb.
A better twelve, his Honor said,
Was rare, except among the dead.
The witnesses were called and sworn.
The tales they told made angels mourn,
And the Good Book they’d kissed became
Red with the consciousness of shame.
Whenever one of them approached
The truth, “That witness wasn’t coached,
Your Honor!” cried the lawyers both.
“Strike out his testimony,” quoth
The learned Judge: “this court denies
Its ear to stories that surprise.
I hold that witnesses exempt
From coaching all are in contempt.”
Both Prosecution and Defense
Applauded the judicial sense,
And the spectators all averred
Such wisdom they had never heard:
’Twas plain the prisoner would be
Found guilty in the first degree.
Meanwhile that wight’s pale cheek confessed
The nameless terrors in his breast.
He felt remorseful, too, because
He wasn’t half they said he was.
“If I’d been such a rogue,” he mused
On opportunities unused,
“I might have easily become
As wealthy as Methusalum.”
This journalist adorned, alas,
The middle, not the Bible, class.

With equal skill the lawyers’ pleas
Attested their divided fees.
Each gave the other one the lie,
Then helped him frame a sharp reply.
Good Lord! it was a bitter fight,
And lasted all the day and night.
When once or oftener the roar
Had silenced the judicial snore
The speaker suffered for the sport
By fining for contempt of court.
Twelve jurors’ noses good and true
Unceasing sang the trial through,
And even vox populi was spent
In rattles through a nasal vent.
Clerk, bailiff, constables and all
Heard Morpheus sound the trumpet call
To arms⁠—his arms⁠—and all fell in
Save counsel for the Man of Sin.
That thaumaturgist stood and swayed
The wand their faculties obeyed⁠—
That magic wand which, like a flame,
Leapt, wavered, quivered and became
A wonder-worker⁠—known among
The ignoble vulgar as a Tongue.

How long, O Lord, how long my verse
Runs on for better or for worse
In meter which o’ermasters me,
Octosyllabically free!⁠—
A meter which, the poets say,
No power of restraint can stay;⁠—
A hard-mouthed meter, suited well
To him who, having naught to tell,
Must hold attention as a trout
Is held, by paying out and out
The slender line which else would break
Should one attempt the fish to take.
Thus tavern guides who’ve naught to show
But some adjacent curio
By devious trails their patrons lead
And make them think ’tis far indeed.
Where was I?

While the lawyer talked
The rogue took up his feet and walked:
While all about him loudly slept,
Into the street he calmly stepped.
In very truth, the man who thought
The people’s voice from heaven had caught
God’s inspiration took a change
Of venue⁠—it was passing strange!
Straight to his editor he went
And that ingenious person sent
A Negro to impersonate
The fugitive. In adequate
Disguise he took his vacant place
And buried in his arms his face.
When all was done the lawyer stopped
And silence like a bombshell dropped
Upon the court: Judge, jury, all
Within that venerable hall
(Except the deaf and dumb, indeed,
And one or two whom death had freed)
Awoke and tried to look as though
Slumber was all they did not know.

And now that tireless lawyer-man
Took breath, and then again began:
“Your Honor, if you did attend
To what I’ve urged (my learned friend
Nodded concurrence) to support
The motion I have made, this court
May soon adjourn. With your assent
I’ve shown abundant precedent
For introducing now, though late,
New evidence to exculpate
My client. So, if you’ll allow,
I’ll prove an alibi!” “What?⁠—how?”
Stammered the judge. “Well, yes, I can’t
Deny your showing, and I grant
The motion. Do I understand
You undertake to prove⁠—good land!⁠—
That when the crime⁠—you mean to show
Your client wasn’t there?” “O, no,
I cannot quite do that, I find:
My alibi’s another kind
Of alibi⁠—I’ll make it clear,
Your Honor, that he isn’t here.”
The Darky here upreared his head,
Tranquillity affrighted fled
And consternation reigned instead!

A Meeting

“Good morning,” said Garfield, extending his hand,
To Mr. Parnell in the Heavenly Land.
“Good morning, good morning,” said Mr. Parnell;
“I hope (though ’tis needless to ask) you are well.
How sweetly that chorus of cherubim sings!
Pray how do you manage these cumbersome wings?
This halo⁠—I dare say I’m terribly green,
But somehow I can’t make it hold my dudheen.
This harp is all right, but the shamrock I miss,
And⁠—O, by the way, in this region of bliss
I trust that the rascally schemer who wrote
The Morey epistle, which lost you the vote
Electoral, I am not likely to meet?”

Then Garfield, his eyes on the cloud at his feet,
Burned in the cheeks with a fervor divine
That conquered his halo’s inferior shine;
Then said, with a look that was level and far:
“I fear (to be honest and frank) that you are.
The person who wrote that mysterious, queer,
Bad letter is here⁠—ah, exceedingly here.”
And he smiled in an infantile sort of a way,
Like a man with a qualm, and went on to say:
“I’m happy to meet you. What news from below?
Did it look when you left there as if they would show
Who wrote, with a villainous purpose in view,
The peppery letters imputed to you?”

Said Mr. Parnell: “Yes, it did, I must say⁠—
In fact, that’s the reason I hastened away.”
Then they sang a psalm, and they sang so well
That Murchison heard it while sobbing in Hell.

J. F. B.

How well this man unfolded to our view
The world’s beliefs of Death and Heaven and Hell⁠—
This man whose own convictions none could tell,
Nor if his maze of reason had a clew.
Dogmas he wrote for daily bread, but knew
The fair philosophies of doubt so well
That while we listened to his words there fell
Some that were strangely comforting if true.
Marking how wise we grew upon his doubt,
We said: “If so, by groping in the night,
He can proclaim some certain paths of trust,
How great our profit if he saw about
His feet the highways leading to the light.”
Now he sees all. Ah, Christ! his mouth is dust!

The Dying Statesman

It is a politician man⁠—
He draweth near his end,
And friends weep round that partisan,
Of every man the friend.

Between the Known and the Unknown
He lieth on the strand;
The light upon the sea is thrown
That lay upon the land.

It shineth in his glazing eye,
It burneth on his face;
God send that when we come to die
We know that sign of grace!

Upon his lips his blessed sprite
Poiseth her joyous wing.
“How is it with thee, child of light?
Dost hear the angels sing?”

“The song I hear, the crown I see,
And know that God is love.
Farewell, dark world⁠—I go to be
A postmaster above!”

For him no monumental arch,
But, O, ’tis good and brave
To see the Grand Old Party march
To office o’er his grave!

The Death of Grant

Father! whose hard and cruel law
Is part of thy compassion’s plan,
Thy works presumptuously we scan
For what the prophets say they saw.

Unbidden still the awful slope
Walling us in we climb to gain
Assurance of the shining plain
That faith has certified to hope.

In vain!⁠—beyond the circling hill
The shadow and the cloud abide.
Subdue the doubt, our spirits guide
To trust the record and be still.

To trust it loyally as he
Who, heedful of his high design,
Ne’er raised a seeking eye to thine,
But wrought thy will unconsciously,

Disputing not of chance or fate,
Nor questioning of cause or creed;
For anything but duty’s deed
Too simply wise, too humbly great.

The cannon syllabled his name;
His shadow shifted o’er the land,
Portentous, as at his demand
Successive bastions sprang to flame!

He flared the continent with fire,
The rivers ran in lines of light!
Thy will be done on earth⁠—if right
Or wrong he cared not to inquire.

His was the heavy hand, and his
The service of the despot blade;
His the soft answer that allayed
War’s giant animosities.

Let us have peace: our clouded eyes,
Fill, Father, with another light,
That we may see with clearer sight
Thy servant’s soul in Paradise.

The Fountain Refilled

Of Hans Pietro Shanahan
(Who was a most ingenious man)
The Muse of History records
That he’d get drunk as twenty lords.

He’d get so truly drunk that men
Stood by to marvel at him when
His slow advance along the street
Was but a vain cycloidal feat.

And when ’twas fated that he fall
With a wide geographic sprawl,
They signified assent by sounds
Heard (faintly) at its utmost bounds.

And yet this Mr. Shanahan
(Who was a most ingenious man)
Cast not on wine his thirsty eyes
When it was red or otherwise.

All malt, or spirituous tope
He loathed as cats dissent from soap;
And cider, if it touched his lip,
Evoked a groan at every sip.

But still, as heretofore explained,
He not infrequently was grained.
(I’m not of those who call it “corned”⁠—
Coarse speech I’ve always duly scorned.)

Though truth to say, and that’s but right,
Strong drink (it hath an adder’s bite!)
Was what had put him in the mud,
The only kind he used was blood!

Alas, that an immortal soul
Addicted to the flowing bowl
The emptied flagon should again
Replenish from a neighbor’s vein!

But, Mr. Shanahan was so
Constructed, and his taste that low.
Not more deplorable was he
In kind of thirst than in degree;

For sometimes fifty souls would pay
The debt of nature in a day
To free him from the shame and pain
Of dread Sobriety’s misreign.

His native land, proud of its sense
Of his unique inabstinence,
Abated something of its pride
At thought of his unfilled inside;

And some the boldness had to say
’Twere well if he were called away
To slake his thirst forevermore
In oceans of celestial gore.

But Hans Pietro Shanahan
(Who was a most ingenious man)
Knew that his thirst was mortal; so
Remained unsainted here below⁠—

Unsainted and unsaintly, for
He neither went to glory nor
To abdicate his power deigned
Where, under Providence, he reigned,

But kept his Boss’s power accurst
To serve his wild uncommon thirst.
Which now had grown so truly great
It was a drain upon the State.

Soon, soon there came a time, alas!
When he turned down an empty glass⁠—
All practicable means were vain
His special wassail to obtain.

In vain poor Decimation tried
To furnish forth the needful tide;
And Civil War as vainly shed
Its niggard offering of red.

Poor Shanahan! his thirst increased
Until he wished himself deceased,
Invoked the firearm and the knife,
But could not die to save his life!

He was so dry his own veins made
No answer to the seeking blade;
So weak that when he would have passed
Away he could not breathe his last.

’Twas then, when almost in despair,
(Unlaced his shoon, unkempt his hair)
He saw as in a dream a way
To wet afresh his mortal clay.

Yes, Hans Pietro Shanahan
(Who was a most ingenious man)
Saw freedom, and with joy and pride
“Thalassa! (or Thalatta!)” cried.

Straight to the aldermen went he,
With many a “pull” and many a fee,
And many a most corrupt “combine”
(The Press for twenty cents a line

Held out and fought him⁠—O, God, bless
Forevermore the holy Press!)
Till he had franchises complete
For trolley lines on every street!

The cars were builded and, they say,
Were run on rails laid every way⁠—
Rhomboidal roads, and circular,
And oval⁠—everywhere a car⁠—

Square, dodecagonal (in great
Esteem the shape called Figure 8)
And many other kinds of form
As different as paths of a storm.

No other group of men’s abodes
E’er had so odd electric roads,
That winding in and winding out,
Began and ended all about.

No city had, unless in Mars,
That city’s fatal gift of cars.
They ran by day, they flew by night,
And O, the sorry, sorry sight!

And Hans Pietro Shanahan
(Who was a most ingenious man)
Incessantly, the Muse records,
Lay drunk as twenty thousand lords!

Each to his taste: some men prefer to play
At mystery, as others at piquet.
Some sit in mystic meditation; some
Parade the street with tambourine and drum.
One studies to decipher ancient lore
Which, proving stuff, he studies all the more;
Another swears that learning is but good
To darken things already understood,
Then writes upon Simplicity so well
That none agree on what he wants to tell,
And future ages will declare his pen
Inspired by gods with messages to men.
To found an ancient order, these devote
Their time⁠—with ritual, regalia, goat,
Blankets for tossing, chairs of little ease
And all the modern inconveniences;
Those, saner, frown upon unmeaning rites
And go to church for rational delights.
So all are suited, shallow and profound,
The prophets prosper and the world goes round.
For me⁠—unread in the occult, I’m fain
To damn all mysteries alike as vain,
Spurn the obscure and base my faith upon
The Revelations of the good St. John.

Nanine

We heard a song-bird trilling⁠—
’Twas but a day ago.
Such rapture he was rilling
As only we could know.

This morning he is flinging
His music from the tree,
But something in the singing
Is not the same to me.

His inspiration fails him,
Or he has lost his skill.
Nanine, Nanine, what ails him
That he should sing so ill?

Nanine is not replying⁠—
She hears no earthly song.
The sun and bird are lying
And the night is, O, so long!

Technology

’Twas a serious person with locks of gray
And a figure like a crescent;
His gravity, clearly, had come to stay,
But his smile was evanescent.

He stood and conversed with a neighbor and
With (likewise) a high falsetto;
And he stabbed his forefinger into his hand
As if it had been a stiletto.

His words, like the notes of a tenor drum,
Came out of his head unblended,
And the wonderful altitude of some
Was exceptionally splendid.

While executing a shake of the head,
With the hand, as it were, of a master,
This agonizing old gentleman said:
“ ’Twas a truly sad disaster!

“Four hundred and ten longs and shorts in all,
Went down”⁠—he paused and snuffled.
A single tear was observed to fall,
And the old man’s drum was muffled.

“A very calamitous year,” he said,
And again his head-piece hoary
He shook, and another pearl he shed,
As if he wept con amore.

“O lachrymose person,” I cried, “pray why
Should these failures so affect you?
With speculators in stocks no eye
That’s normal would ever connect you.”

He focused his orbs upon mine and smiled
In a sinister sort of manner.
“Young man,” he said, “your words are wild:
I spoke of the steamship Hanner.

“For she has went down in a howlin’ squall,
And my heart is nigh to breakin’⁠—
Four hundred and ten longs and shorts in all
Will never need undertakin’!

“I’m in the business myself,” said he,
“And you’ve mistook my expression;
For I uses the technical terms, you see,
Employed in my perfession.”

That old undertaker has joined the throng
On the other side of the River,
But I’m still unhappy to think I’m a “long,”
And a tape-line makes me shiver.

A Reply to a Letter

O nonsense, parson⁠—tell me not they thrive
And jubilate who follow your dictation.
The good are the unhappiest lot alive⁠—
I know they are from careful observation.
If freedom from the terrors of damnation
Lengthens the visage like a telescope,
And lachrymosity’s a sign of hope,
Then I’ll continue, in my dreadful plight,
To tread the dusky paths of sin, and grope
Contentedly without your lantern’s light;
And though in many a bog beslubbered quite,
Refuse to flay me with ecclesiastic soap.

You say ’tis a sad world, seeing I’m condemned,
With many a million others of my kidney.
Each continent’s Hammed, Japheted and Shemmed
With sinners⁠—worldlings like Sir Philip Sidney
And scoffers like Voltaire, who thought it bliss
To simulate respect for Genesis⁠—
Who bent the mental knee as if in prayer,
But mocked at Moses underneath his hair,
And like an angry gander bowed his head to hiss.

Seeing such as these, who die without contrition,
Must go to⁠—beg your pardon, sir⁠—perdition,
The sons of light, you tell me, can’t be gay,
But count it sin of the sort called omission
The groan to smother or the tear to stay
Or fail to⁠—what is that they live by?⁠—pray.
So down they kneel, and the whole serious race is
Put by divine compassion on a praying basis.

Well, if you take it so to heart, while yet
Our own hearts are so light with nature’s leaven,
You’ll weep indeed when we in Hades sweat,
And you look down upon us out of Heaven.
In fancy, lo! I see your wailing shades
Thronging the crystal battlements. Cascades
Of tears spring singing from each golden spout,
Run roaring from the verge with hoarser sound,
Dash downward through the glimmering profound,
Quench the tormenting flame and put the Devil out!

Presumptuous fool! to you no power belongs
To pitchfork me to Heaven upon the prongs
Of a bad pen, whose disobedient sputter,
With less of ink than incoherence fraught,
Befits the folly that it tries to utter.
Brains, I observe, as well as tongues, can stutter:
You suffer from impediment of thought.
Save when considering your bread-and-butter.

When next you “point the way to Heaven,” take care:
Your fingers all being thumbs, point Heaven knows where!
Farewell, poor dunce! your letter though I blame,
Bears witness how my anger I can tame:
I’ve called you everything except your hateful name!

To Oscar Wilde

Because from Folly’s lips you got
Some babbled mandate to subdue
The realm of Common Sense, and you
Made promise and considered not⁠—

Because you strike a random blow
At what you do not understand,
And beckon with a friendly hand
To something that you do not know,

I hold no speech of your desert,
Nor answer with porrected shield
The wooden weapon that you wield,
But meet you with a cast of dirt.

Dispute with such a thing as you⁠—
Twin show to the two-headed calf?
Why, sir, if I repress my laugh,
’Tis more than half the world can do.

Born Leaders of Men

Tuckerton Tamerlane Morey Mahosh
Is a statesman of world-wide fame,
With a notable knack at rhetorical bosh
To glorify somebody’s name⁠—
Somebody chosen by Tuckerton’s masters
To succor the country from divers disasters
Portentous to Mr. Mahosh.

Percy O’Halloran Tarpy Cabee
Is in the political swim.
He cares not a button for men, not he:
Great principles captivate him⁠—
Principles cleverly cut out and fitted
To Percy’s capacity, duly admitted
And fought for by Mr. Cabee.

Drusus Tum Swinnerton Porfer Fitzurse
Holds office the most of his life.
For men nor for principles cares he a curse
But much for his neighbor’s wife.
The Ship of State leaks, but he doesn’t pump any⁠—
Messrs. Mahosh, Cabee & Company
Pump for good Mr. Fitzurse.

The Crime of 1903

Time was, not very long ago,
As by historians time is reckoned,
When first of virtues here below
Was hatred of secession, though
Some swore it wasn’t even second;
But these (they mostly were down South)
Have all renounced their view with candor⁠—
Some tardily by word of mouth,
Some, earlier, in a manner grander.

To stamp their error out, ’tis true,
We paid enough of blood (the treasure
Would pave with gold an avenue)
To float a battleship or two,
If so the cost we choose to measure.
’Twas worth it all, we say and say⁠—
The President has often said it;
And so it was⁠—to us; and they
Say nothing, as a rule, who shed it.

“Times change and we change with them,” men
Of old renown averred in Latin;
And that’s as true on tongue or pen
This blessed century as when
The seat of empire Caesar sat in.
For see how many play their parts
As ardent lovers of secession,
Promoting it with all their hearts⁠—
In countries out of our possession.

O men of variable views,
How can you be so light and fickle?
Is it because you think the news
From Panama portends no bruise
To you, nor payment of a nickel?
Nay, is it that you scent a gain
In troubles of a neighbor nation,
And so appraise her loss and pain
As nothing worth a valuation?

Those ills ’tis easy to endure
That light upon and sting another⁠—
That’s Christian fortitude; but sure
There’s somewhere an account of your
Least feeling toward a hapless brother.
Himself may show by deed and speech
Less racial sympathies than tribal,
But⁠—well, this is no place to preach;
The sermon’s mostly in the Bible.

We’re false to trust and quick to spy
The fissure in a friendly armor,
Even Freedom can no more rely
Upon our promise not to harm her.
O Guardian of Continents,
My country! shall that evil dower,
The passion for preeminence,
Cry from thy seaward battlements
A soul already drunk with power?

For Expulsion

They say, Brig. Roberts, you have seven wives,
And every one a beauty! As to that
I’m not informed; in the domestic hives
Of Utah, where I’ve sometimes hung my hat,
Not all the dames were comely. Like a cat
That has nine lives and must support them all,
You have to hustle round a bit, I fancy.
Now don’t you really agree with Paul
That women are the devil?⁠—even Nancy
And Mary Jane and Caroline and Ella
And Ruth and Adeline and Isabella!

If I had half as many wives as you
(That’s three wives and a half as I compute)
I hardly know what I’d be driven to.
I might in desperation play the flute,
Or Congress find in me a raw recruit.
Then, I suppose, the country would uprise
And say the things I least should care to hear:
And virtuous editors would damn my eyes,
And cartilaginous virgins pain my ear.
And now and then some pious person clamor,
Blessed with one wife, ten wenches and no grammar.

All that and more you’re suffering, my friend,
For, having married all the maids you saw,
You contumaciously refuse to bend
A corrigible back to altered law
And leave them (all but one) lamenting. Pshaw!
Don’t be so squeamish. Yes, the children may
Lament a little too when made acquainted
With their mischance in being put away,
And your own countenance with shame be painted;
But that’s the smallest price for which we’ll sell
A seat in Congress and a bed in Hell.

Judex Jocosus

We blench when maniacs to dance begin.
What makes a skull so dreadful is the grin.
When horrible and ludicrous unite,
Our sense of humor does but feed our fright.
As the shocked spirit with a double dread
Might see a monkey watching by the dead,
Or headsman part a neck, without a fault,
While turning o’er the block a somersault.
So, Judge Hilario, the untroubled awe
And reverence men cherish for the law
Turn all to terror when with wit profound
And tricksy humor you the law expound.
More frightful sounds the felon’s doom by half
From lips still twisted to an idiot laugh.

“Graft”

Cuba, our pupil, let thy glory shine⁠—
Our own is brighter, but effulgent thine!
Lately thine arms struck terror to the foe,
And now thy hands bring treasuries to woe!
Daughter of Terrors, Mother of Alarms,
Courage himself may fly before thine arms;
But O, what thing escapes, what thing withstands,
The power of those comprehensive hands?

The Tale of a Crime

Once, in the olden time, a certain King
(But where he reigned I know not) said: “Go bring
My Chief Adviser here before the throne.
And cut his head off clear down to the bone!”
“With pleasure, Sire,” said⁠—keen to earn his wage⁠—
The High Dissuader from the Sin of Age;
“But kings should still be civil, even when just:
You’ll charge the villain with some crime, I trust?”

“Why, that’s no more than fair,” the King replied.
They brought the culprit in, securely tied,
And the King said: “Let someone who can read
Stand forward and unfold the Golden Screed,
Bright with the names of all the sins and crimes
And vices ever known from ancient times.
We’ll fit the fellow for the headsman’s prank
With one appropriate to his face and rank.”

In drowsy monotone the Lector read
The shining list, beginning at the head.
(Lèse-majesté was naturally first⁠—
Of crimes conceivable, the blackest, worst!)
As each was named the prisoner addressed
The throne and, as the law compelled, confessed.
’Twas fatal not to: in that olden day
Little was heard about the law’s delay.

But still the royal taste could find for him
No crime well suited to the royal whim,
And, wearied by the reader’s droning voice,
The sovereign fell asleep, nor made a choice⁠—
Snored like an organ till the stones were jarred
Distinguishing the palace from the yard.
Meantime, the accused continued to confess,
Each nod said “guilty” and each look said “yes.”

And still the monarch slept: each courtier feared
To wake him lest himself should “lose his beard.”
(’Twas a fine euphemism, and meant his head⁠—
Some things for prudence are obliquely said.)
“Finis” the reader said, and roundabout
Fell silence like a loud awakening shout!
The startled sovereign left a snore half-snored⁠—
“That’s what the scoundrel’s guilty of!” he roared.

So there before the king upon his throne.
They cut his head off clean down to the bone!
And all the devils made a joyous din
To celebrate the new and lovely sin.

To the Bartholdi Statue

O Liberty, God-gifted⁠—
Young and immortal maid⁠—
In your high hand uplifted,
The torch declares your trade.

Its crimson menace, flaming
Upon the sea and shore,
Is, trumpet-like, proclaiming
That Law shall be no more.

Austere incendiary,
We’re blinking in the light;
Where is your customary
Grenade of dynamite?

Where are your staves and switches
For men of gentle birth?
Your mask and dirk for riches?
Your chains for wit and worth?

Perhaps, you’ve brought the halters
You used in the old days,
When round religion’s altars
You stabled Cromwell’s bays?

Behind you, unsuspected,
Have you the axe, fair wench,
Wherewith you once collected
A poll-tax from the French?

America salutes you⁠—
Preparing to “disgorge.”
Take everything that suits you,
And marry Henry George.

An Unmerry Christmas

Christmas, you tell me, comes but once a year.
One place it never comes, and that is here.
Here, in these pages no good wishes spring,
No well-worn greetings tediously ring⁠—
For Christmas greetings are like pots of ore:
The hollower they are they ring the more.
Here shall no holly cast a spiny shade,
Nor mistletoe my solitude invade,
No trinket-laden vegetable come,
No jorum steam with Sheolate of rum.
No shrilling children shall their voices rear.
Hurrah for Christmas without Christmas cheer!

No presents, if you please⁠—I know too well
What Herbert Spencer, if he didn’t tell
(I know not if he did) yet might have told
Of present-giving in the days of old,
When Early Man with gifts propitiated
The chiefs whom most he doubted, feared and hated,
Or tendered them in hope to reap some rude
Advantage from the taker’s gratitude.
Since thus the Gift its origin derives
(How much of its first character survives
You know as well as I) my stocking’s tied,
My pocket buttoned⁠—with my soul inside.
I save my money and I save my pride.

Dinner? Yes; thank you⁠—just a baby’s body
Done to a nutty brown, and a tear toddy
To give me appetite; and as to drink,
About a half a jug of blood, I think,
Will do; for still I love the good red wine,
Coagulating well, with wrinkles fine
Fretting the satin surface of its flood.
O tope of kings⁠—divine Falernian⁠—blood!

Duse take the shouting fowls upon the limb,
The kneeling cattle and the rising hymn!
Has not a pagan rights to be regarded⁠—
His heart assaulted and his ear bombarded
With sentiments and sounds that good old Pan
Even in his demonium would ban?

No, friends⁠—no Christmas here, for I have sworn
To keep my heart hard and my knees unworn.
Enough you have of jester, player, priest:
I as the skeleton attend your feast,
In the mad revelry to make a lull
With shaken finger and with bobbing skull.
However you my services may flout,
Philosophy disdain and reason doubt,
I mean to hold in customary state,
My dismal revelry and celebrate
My yearly rite until the crack o’ doom⁠—
Ignore the cheerful season’s warmth and bloom
And cultivate an oasis of gloom.

Erected to “Boss” Shepherd by the dear
Good folk he lived and moved among in peace⁠—
Guarded on either hand by the police,
With soldiers in his front and in his rear.

From Virginia to Paris

The polecat, sovereign of its native wood,
Dashes damnation upon bad and good;
The health of all the upas trees impairs
By exhalations deadlier than theirs;
Poisons the rattlesnake and warts the toad⁠—
The creeks go rotten and the rocks corrode!
She shakes o’er breathless hill and shrinking dale
The horrid aspergillus of her tail!
From every saturated hair, till dry,
The spargent fragrances divergent fly,
Stifle the world and reek along the sky!

Removed to alien scenes, amid the strife
Of urban odors to ungladden life⁠—
Where gas and sewers and dead dogs conspire
The flesh to torture and the soul to fire⁠—
Where all the “well defined and several stinks”
Known to mankind hold revel and high jinks⁠—
Humbled in spirit, smitten with a sense
Of lost distinction, leveled eminence,
Her powers atrophied, her vigor sunk,
She lives deodorized, a sweeter skunk.

A “Mute Inglorious Milton”

“O, I’m the Unaverage Man,
But you never have heard of me,
For my brother, the Average Man, outran
My fame with rapiditee,
And I’m sunk in Oblivion’s sea;
But my bully big brother the world can span
With his wide notorietee.
I do everything that I can
To make ’em attend to me,
But the papers ignore the Unaverage Man
With a weird uniformitee.”

So sang with a dolorous note
A voice that I heard from the beach;
On the sable waters it seemed to float
Like a mortal part of speech.
The sea was Oblivion’s sea,
And I cried as I plunged to swim:
“The Unaverage Man shall reside with me.”
But he didn’t⁠—I stayed with him!

The Free Trader’s Lament

Oft from a trading-boat I purchased spice
And shells and corals, brought for my inspection
From the fair tropics⁠—paid a Christian price
And was content in my fool’s paradise,
Where never had been heard the word “Protection.”

’Twas my sole island; there I dwelt alone⁠—
No customs-house, collector nor collection,
But a man came who in a pious tone
Condoled with me that I had never known
The manifest advantage of Protection.

So, when the trading-boat arrived one day
He threw a stink-pot into its mid-section.
The traders paddled for their lives away,
Nor came again into that haunted bay,
The blessed home thereafter of Protection.

Then down he sat, that philanthropic man,
And spat upon some mud of his selection,
And worked it, with his knuckles in a pan
To shapes of shells and coral things, and span
A thread of song in glory of Protection.

He baked them in the sun. His air devout
Enchanted me. I made a genuflection:
“God help you, gentle sir,” I said. “No doubt,”
He answered gravely, “I’ll get on without
Assistance now that we have got Protection.”

Thenceforth I bought his wares⁠—at what a price
For shells and corals of such imperfection!
“Ah, now,” said he, “your lot is truly nice.”
But still in all that isle there was no spice
To season to my taste that dish, Protection.

Subterranean Phantasies

I died. As meekly in the earth I lay,
With shriveled fingers reverently folded,
The worm⁠—uncivil engineer!⁠—my clay
Tunneled industriously, and the mole did.
My body could not dodge them, but my soul did;
For that had flown from this terrestrial ball
And I was rid of it for good and all.

So there I lay, debating what to do⁠—
What measures might most usefully be taken
To circumvent the subterranean crew
Of anthropophagi and save my bacon.
My fortitude was all this while unshaken,
But any gentleman, of course, protests
Against receiving uninvited guests.

However proud he might be of his meats,
Not even Apicius, nor, I think, Lucullus,
Wasted on tramps his culinary sweets;
“Aut Caesar,” say judicious hosts, “aut nullus.”
And though when Marcius came unbidden Tullus
Aufidius feasted him because he starved,
Marcius by Tullus afterward was carved.

We feed the hungry, as the book commands
(For men might question else our orthodoxy)
But do not care to see the outstretched hands,
And so we minister to them by proxy.
When Want, in his improper person, knocks he
Finds we’re engaged. The graveworm’s very fresh
To think we like his presence in the flesh.

So, as I said, I lay in doubt; in all
That underworld no judges could determine
My rights. When Death approaches them they fall,
And falling, naturally soil their ermine.
And still below ground, as above, the vermin
That work by dark and silent methods win
The case⁠—the burial case that one is in.

Cases at law so slowly get ahead,
Even when the right is visibly unclouded,
That if all men are classed as quick and dead,
The judges all are dead, though some unshrouded.
Pray Jove that when they’re actually crowded
On Styx’s brink, and Charon rows in sight,
His bark prove worse than Cerberus’s bite.

Ah! Cerberus, if you had but begot
A race of three-mouthed dogs for man to nourish
And woman to caress, the muse had not
Lamented the decay of virtues currish,
And triple-hydrophobia now would flourish,
For barking, biting, kissing to employ
Canine repeaters were indeed a joy.

Lord! how we cling to this vile world! Here I,
Whose dust was laid ere I began this carping,
By moles and worms and such familiar fry
Run through and through, am singing still and harping
Of mundane matters⁠—flatting, too, and sharping.
I hate the Angel of the Sleeping-Cup:
So I’m for getting⁠—and for shutting⁠—up.

In Memoriam

Beauty (they called her) wasn’t a maid
Of many things in the world afraid.
She wasn’t a maid who turned and fled
At sight of a mouse, alive or dead.
She wasn’t a maid a man could “shoo”
By shouting, however abruptly, “Boo!”
She wasn’t a maid who’d run and hide
If her face and figure you idly eyed.
She wasn’t a maid who’d blush and shake
When asked what part of the fowl she’d take.
(I blush myself to confess she preferred,
And commonly got, the most of the bird.)
She wasn’t a maid to simper because
She was asked to sing⁠—if she ever was.
In short, if the truth must be displayed
All naked⁠—Beauty wasn’t a maid.
Beauty, furry and fine and fat,
Yawny and clawy, sleek and all that,
Was a pampered and spoiled Angora cat!
I loved her well, and I’m proud that she
Wasn’t indifferent, quite, to me;
In fact I have sometimes gone so far
(You know, mesdames, how silly men are)
As to think she preferred⁠—excuse the conceit⁠—
My legs upon which to sharpen her feet.
Perhaps it shouldn’t have gone for much,
But I started and thrilled beneath her touch!

Ah, well, that’s ancient history now:
The fingers of Time have touched my brow,
And I hear with never a start to-day
That Beauty has passed from the earth away.
Gone!⁠—her death-song (it killed her) sung.
Gone!⁠—her fiddlestrings all unstrung.
Gone to the bliss of a new regime
Of turkey smothered in seas of cream;
Of roasted mice (a superior breed,
To science unknown and the coarser need
Of the living cat) cooked by the flame
Of the dainty soul of an erring dame
Who gave to purity all her care,
Neglecting the duty of daily prayer⁠—
Crisp, delicate mice, just touched with spice
By the ghost of a breeze from Paradise;
A very digestible sort of mice.

Let scoffers sneer, I propose to hold
That Beauty has mounted the Stair of Gold,
To eat and eat, forever and aye,
On a velvet rug from a golden tray.
But the human spirit⁠—that is my creed⁠—
Rots in the ground like a barren seed.
That is my creed, abhorred by Man
But approved by Cat since time began.
Till Death shall kick at me, thundering “Scat!”
I shall hold to that, I shall hold to that.

The Statesmen

How blest the land that counts among
Her sons so many good and wise,
To execute great feats of tongue
When troubles rise.

Behold them mounting every stump
By speech our liberty to guard.
Observe their courage⁠—see them jump,
And come down hard!

“Walk up, walk up!” each cries aloud,
“And learn from me what you must do
To turn aside the thunder cloud,
The earthquake too.

“Beware the wiles of yonder quack
Who stuffs the ears of all that pass.
I⁠—I alone can show that black
Is white as grass.”

They shout through all the day and break
The silence of the night as well.
They’d make⁠—I wish they’d go and make⁠—
Of Heaven a Hell.

A advocates free silver, B
Free trade and C free banking laws.
Free board, clothes, lodging would from me
Win warm applause.

Lo, D lifts up his voice: “You see
The single tax on land would fall
On all alike.” More evenly
No tax at all.

“With paper money” bellows E
“We’ll all be rich as lords.” No doubt⁠—
And richest of the lot will be
The chap without.

As many “cures” as addle wits
Who know not what the ailment is!
Meanwhile the patient foams and spits
Like a gin fizz.

Alas, poor Body Politic,
Your fate is all too clearly read:
To be not altogether quick,
Nor very dead.

You take your exercise in squirms,
Your rest in fainting fits between.
’Tis plain that your disorder’s worms⁠—
Worms fat and lean.

Worm Capital, Worm Labor dwell
Within your maw and muscle’s scope.
Their quarrels make your life a Hell,
Your death a hope.

God send you find not such an end
To ills however sharp and huge!
God send you convalesce! God send
You vermifuge.

Brothers

Scene⁠—A lawyer’s dreadful den.

Enter stall-fed citizen.

The Cynic’s Bequest

In that fair city, Ispahan,
There dwelt a problematic man,
Whose angel never was released,
Who never once let out his beast,
But kept, through all the seasons’ round,
Silence unbroken and profound.
No Prophecy, with ear applied
To key-hole of the future, tried
Successfully to catch a hint
Of what he’d do nor when begin’t;
As sternly did his past defy
Mild Retrospection’s backward eye.
Though all admired his silent ways,
The women loudest were in praise:
For ladies love those men the most
Who never, never, never boast⁠—
Who ne’er disclose their aims and ends
To naughty, naughty, naughty friends.

Yet, sooth to say, the fame outran
The merit of this doubtful man,
For taciturnity in him,
Though not a mere caprice or whim,
Was not a virtue, such as truth,
High birth, or beauty, wealth or youth.
’Twas known, indeed, throughout the span
Of Ispahan, of Gulistan⁠—
These utmost limits of the earth
Knew that the man was dumb from birth.

Unto the Sun with deep salaams
The Parsee spreads his morning palms
(A beacon blazing on a height
Warms o’er his piety by night.)
The Moslem deprecates the deed,
Cuts off the head that holds the creed,
Then reverently goes to grass,
Muttering thanks to Balaam’s Ass
For faith and learning to refute
Idolatry so dissolute!
But should a maniac dash past,
With straws in beard and hands upcast,
To him (through whom, whene’er inclined
To preach a bit to Madmankind,
The Holy Prophet speaks his mind)
Our True Believer lifts his eyes
Devoutly and his prayer applies;
But next to Solyman the Great
Reveres the idiot’s sacred state.
Small wonder then, our worthy mute
Was held in popular repute.
Had he been blind as well as mum,
Been lame as well as blind and dumb,
No bard that ever sang or soared
Could say how he had been adored.
More meagerly endowed, he drew
An homage less prodigious. True,
No soul his praises but did utter⁠—
All plied him with devotion’s butter,
But none had out⁠—’twas to their credit⁠—
The proselyting sword to spread it.
I state these truths, exactly why
The reader knows as well as I;
They’ve nothing in the world to do
With what I hope we’re coming to
If Pegasus be good enough
To move when he has stood enough.
Egad! his ribs I would examine
Had I a sharper spur than famine,
Or even with that if ’twould incline
To examine his instead of mine.
Where was I? Ah, that silent man
Who dwelt one time in Ispahan.
He had a name⁠—was known to all
As Meerza Solyman Zingall.

There lived afar in Astrabad,
A man the world agreed was mad,
So wickedly he broke his joke
Upon the heads of duller folk,
So miserly, from day to day,
He gathered up and hid away
In vaults obscure and cellars haunted
What many worthy people wanted.
A stingy man!⁠—the tradesmen’s palms
Were spread in vain: “I give no alms
Without inquiry”⁠—so he’d say,
And beat the needy duns away.
The bastinado did, ’tis true,
Persuade him, now and then, a few
Odd tens of thousands to disburse
To glut the taxman’s hungry purse,
But still, so rich he grew, his fear
Was constant that the Shah might hear.
(The Shah had heard it long ago,
And asked the taxman if ’twere so,
Who promptly answered, rather airish,
The man had long been on the parish.)
The more he feared, the more he grew
A cynic and a miser, too,
Until his bitterness and pelf
Made him a terror to himself;
Then, with a razor’s neckwise stroke,
He tartly cut his final joke.
So perished, not an hour too soon,
The wicked Muley Ben Maroon.

From Astrabad to Ispahan
At camel speed the rumor ran
That, breaking through tradition hoar,
And throwing all his kinsmen o’er,
The miser’d left his mighty store
Of gold⁠—his palaces and lands⁠—
To needy and deserving hands
(Except a penny here and there
To pay the dervishes for prayer.)
’Twas known indeed throughout the span
Of earth, and into Hindustan,
That our beloved mute was the
Residuary legatee.
The people said ’twas very well,
And each man had a tale to tell
Of how he’d had a finger in’t
By dropping many a friendly hint
At Astrabad, you see. But ah,
They feared the news might reach the Shah!

To prove the will the lawyers bore’t
Before the Kadi’s awful court,
Who nodded, when he heard it read,
Confirmingly, his drowsy head,
Nor thought, his sleepiness so great,
Himself to gobble the estate.
“I give,” the dead had writ, “my all
To Meerza Solyman Zingall
Of Ispahan. With this estate
I might quite easily create
Ten thousand ingrates, but I shun
Temptation and create but one,
In whom the whole unthankful crew
The rich man’s air that ever drew
To fat their pauper lungs I fire
With vain vicarious desire!
From foul Ingratitude’s base rout
I pick this hapless devil out,
Bestowing on him all my lands,
My treasures, camels, slaves and bands
Of wives⁠—I give him all this loot,
And throw my blessing in to boot.
Behold, all men, in this bequest
Philanthropy’s long wrongs redressed:
To speak me ill that man I dower
With fiercest will who lacks the power.
Allah il Allah! now let him bloat
With rancor till his heart’s afloat,
Unable to discharge the wave
Upon his benefactor’s grave!”

Forth in their wrath the people came
And swore it was a sin and shame
To trick their blessed mute; and each
Protested, serious of speech,
That though he’d long foreseen the worst
He’d been against it from the first.
By many means they vainly tried
The testament to set aside,
Each ready with his empty purse
To take upon himself the curse;
For they had powers of invective
Enough to make it ineffective.
The ingrates mustered, every man,
And marched in force to Ispahan
(Which had not quite accommodation)
And held a camp of indignation.

The man, this while, who never spoke⁠—
On whom had fallen this thunder-stroke
Of fortune, gave no feeling vent
Nor dropped a hint of his intent.
Whereas no power to him came
His benefactor to defame,
Some (such a length had slander gone to)
Even whispered that he didn’t want to!
But none his secret could divine;
If suffering he made no sign
Until one night as winter neared
From all his haunts he disappeared⁠—
Evanished in a doubtful blank
Like little crayfish in a bank,
Their heads retracting when you find ’em,
And pulling in their holes behind ’em.

All through the land of Gul, the stout
Young Spring is kicking Winter out.
The grass sneaks in upon the scene,
Defacing it with bottle-green.
The stumbling lamb arrives to ply
His restless tail in every eye,
Eats nasty mint to spoil his meat
And make himself unfit to eat.
Madly his throat the bulbul tears⁠—
In every grove blasphemes and swears
As the immodest rose displays
Her shameless charms a dozen ways.
Lo! now, throughout the utmost span
Of Ispahan⁠—of Gulistan⁠—
A big new book’s displayed in all
The shops and cumbers every stall.
The price is low⁠—the dealers say ’tis⁠—
And the rich are treated to it gratis.
Engraven on its foremost page
These title-words the eye engage:
“The Life of Muley Ben Maroon,
Of Astrabad⁠—Rogue, Thief, Buffoon
And Miser⁠—Liver by the Sweat
Of Better Men: A Lamponette
Composed in Rhyme and Written All
By Meerza Solyman Zingall!”

Corrected News

’Twas a maiden lady, the newspapers say,
Pious and prim and a bit gone-gray.
She slept like an angel, holy and white,
Till ten o’clock in the shank o’ the night,
When men and other wild animals prey,
And then she cried in the viewless gloom:
“There’s a man in the room, a man in the room!”
And this maiden lady, they make it appear,
Leapt out of the window, five fathom sheer!

Alas, that lying is such a sin
When newspaper men need bread and gin
And none can be had for less than a lie!
For the maiden lady a bit gone-gray
Saw the man in the room from across the way,
And leapt, not out of the window but in⁠—
Ten fathoms sheer, as I hope to die!

Justice

Jack Doe met Dick Roe, whose wife he loved,
And said: “I will get the best of him.”
So pulling a knife from his boot, he shoved
It up to the hilt in the breast of him.

Then he moved that weapon forth and back,
Enlarging the hole he had made with it,
Till the smoking liver fell out, and Jack
Merrily, merrily played with it.

Then he reached within and he seized the slack
Of the lesser bowel, and, traveling
Hither and thither, looked idly back
On that small intestine, raveling.

The wretched Richard, with many a grin
Laid on with exceeding suavity,
Curled up and died, and they ran John in
And charged him with sins of gravity.

The case was tried and a verdict found:
The jury, with great humanity,
Acquitted the prisoner on the ground
Of extemporary insanity.

Mr. Fink’s Debating Donkey

Of a person known as Peters I will humbly crave your leave
An unusual adventure into narrative to weave⁠—
Mr. William Perry Peters, of the town of Muscatel,
A public educator and an orator as well.
Mr. Peters had a weakness which, ’tis painful to relate,
Was a strong predisposition to the pleasures of debate.
He would foster disputation wheresoever he might be;
In polygonal contention none so happy was as he.
’Twas observable, however, that the exercises ran
Into monologue by Peters, that rhetorical young man.
And the Muscatelian rustics who assisted at the show,
By involuntary silence testified their overthrow⁠—
Mr. Peters, all unheedful of their silence and their grief,
Still effacing every vestige of erroneous belief.
O, he was a sore affliction to all heretics so bold
As to entertain opinions that he didn’t care to hold.

One day⁠—’twas in pursuance of a pedagogic plan
For the mental elevation of Uncultivated Man⁠—
Mr. Peters, to his pupils, in dismissing them, explained
That the Friday evening following (unless, indeed, it rained)
Would be signalized by holding in the schoolhouse a debate
Free to all who their opinions might desire to ventilate
On the question, “Which is better, as a serviceable gift,
Speech or hearing, from barbarity the human mind to lift?”
The pupils told their fathers, who, forehanded always, met
At the barroom to discuss it every evening, dry or wet.
They argued it and argued it and spat upon the stove,
And the non-committal barman on their differences throve.
And I state it as a maxim in a loosish kind of way:
You’ll have the more to back your word the less you have to say.
Public interest was lively, but one Ebenezer Fink
Of the Rancho del Jackrabbit, only seemed to sit and think.

On the memorable evening all the men of Muscatel
Came to listen to the logic and the eloquence as well⁠—
All but William Perry Peters, whose attendance there, I fear.
Was to wreak his ready rhetoric upon the public ear,
And prove (whichever side he took) that hearing wouldn’t lift
The human mind as ably as the other, greater gift.
The judges being chosen and the disputants enrolled,
The question he proceeded in extenso to unfold:
“Resolved⁠—The sense of hearing lifts the mind up out of reach
Of the fogs of error better than the faculty of speech.”
This simple proposition he expounded, word by word,
Until they best understood it who least perfectly had heard.
Even the judges comprehended as he ventured to explain⁠—
The impact of a spit-ball admonishing in vain.
Beginning at a period before Creation’s morn,
He had reached the bounds of tolerance and Adam yet unborn.
As down the early centuries of pre-historic time
He tracked important principles and quoted striking rhyme,
And Whisky Bill, prosaic soul! proclaiming him a jay,
Had risen and like an earthquake, “reeled unheededly away,”
And a late lamented cat, when opportunity should serve,
Was preparing to embark upon her parabolic curve,
A noise arose outside⁠—the door was opened with a bang
And old Ebenezer Fink was heard ejaculating “G’lang!”
Straight into that assembly gravely marched without a wink
An ancient ass⁠—the property it was of Mr. Fink.
Its ears depressed and beating time to its infestive tread,
Silent through silence moved amain that stately quadruped!
It stopped before the orator, and in the lamplight thrown
Upon its tail they saw that member weighted with a stone.
Then spake old Ebenezer: “Gents, I heern o’ this debate
On w’ether v’ice or y’ears is best the mind to elevate.
Now ’yer’s a bird ken throw some light uponto that tough theme:
He has ’em both, I’m free to say, oncommonly extreme.
He wa’n’t invited for to speak, but he will not refuse
(If t’other gentleman ken wait) to exposay his views.”

Ere merriment or anger o’er amazement could prevail,
He cut the string that held the stone on that canary’s tail.
Freed from the weight, that member made a gesture of delight,
Then rose until its rigid length was horizontal quite.
With lifted head and level ears along his withers laid,
Jack sighed, refilled his lungs and then⁠—to put it mildly⁠—brayed!
He brayed until the stones were stirred in circumjacent hills,
And sleeping women rose and fled, in divers kinds of frills.
’Tis said that awful bugle-blast⁠—to make the story brief⁠—
Wafted William Perry Peters through the window, like a leaf!

Such is the tale. If anything additional occurred
’Tis not set down, though, truly, I remember to have heard
That a gentleman named Peters, now residing at Soquel,
A considerable distance from the town of Muscatel,
Is opposed to education, and to rhetoric, as well.

To My Laundress

Saponacea, wert thou not so fair
I’d curse thee for thy multitude of sins⁠—
For sending home my clothes all full of pins,
A shirt occasionally that’s a snare
And a delusion, got, the Lord knows where,
The Lord knows why⁠—a sock whose outs and ins
None know, nor where it ends nor where begins,
And fewer cuffs than ought to be my share.
But when I mark thy lilies how they grow,
And the red roses of thy ripening charms,
I bless the lovelight in thy dark eyes dreaming.
I’ll never pay thee, but I’d gladly go
Into the magic circle of thine arms,
Supple and fragrant from repeated steaming.

Fame

One thousand years I slept beneath the sod,
My sleep in 1901 beginning,
Then, by the action of some scurvy god
Who happened then to recollect my sinning,
I was revived and given another inning.
On breaking from my grave I saw a crowd⁠—
A formless multitude of men and women,
Gathered about a ruin. Clamors loud
I heard, and curses deep enough to swim in;
And, pointing at me, one said: “Let’s put him in!”
Then each turned on me with an evil look,
As in my ragged shroud I stood and shook.

“Nay, good Posterity,” I cried, “forbear!
If that’s a jail I fain would be remaining
Outside, for truly I should little care
To catch my death of cold. I’m just regaining
The life lost long ago by my disdaining
To take precautions against draughts like those
That, haply, penetrate that cracked and splitting
Old structure.” Then an aged wight arose
From a chair of state in which he had been sitting,
And with preliminary coughing, spitting
And wheezing, said: “ ’Tis not a jail, we’re sure,
Whate’er it may have been when it was newer.

“ ’Twas found two centuries ago, o’ergrown
With brush and ivy, all undoored, ungated;
And in restoring it we found a stone
Set here and there in the dilapidated
And crumbling frieze, inscribed, in antiquated
Big characters, with certain uncouth names,
Which we conclude were borne of old by awful
Rapscallions guilty of all sinful games⁠—
Vagrants engaged in purposes unlawful,
And orators less sensible than jawful.
So each ten years we add to the long row
A name, the most unworthy that we know.”

“But why,” I asked, “put mine in?” He replied:
“You look it”⁠—and the judgment pained me greatly;
Right gladly would I then and there have died,
But that I’d risen from the grave so lately.
But on examining that solemn, stately
Old ruin I remarked: “My friends, you err⁠—
The truth of this is just what I expected.
This building in its time made quite a stir.
I lived (was famous, too) when ’twas erected.
The names here first inscribed were much respected.
This is the Hall of Fame, or I’m a stork,
And this goat pasture once was called New York.”

Omnes Vanitas

Alas for ambition’s possessor!
Alas for the famous and proud!
The Isle of Manhattan’s best dresser
Is wearing a hand-me-down shroud.

The world has forgotten his glory;
The wagoner sings on his wain,
And Chauncey Depew tells a story,
And jackasses laugh in the lane.

The New “Ulalume”

The skies they were ashen and sober,
The leaves they were crisped and sere⁠—
”   ”     ”    ” withering ”   ”
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber⁠—
”  ” down ”  ” dark tarn ”  ”
In the   misty   mid  region of Weir⁠—
”  ” ghoul-haunted woodland ”  ”

Consolation

Little’s the good to sit and grieve
Because the serpent tempted Eve.
Better to wipe your eyes and take
A club and go out and kill a snake.

But if you prefer, as I suspect,
To philosophize, why, then, reflect:
If the cunning rascal upon the limb
Hadn’t tempted her she’d have tempted him.

Fate

Alas, alas, for the tourist’s guide!⁠—
He turned from the beaten trail aside,
Wandered bewildered, lay down and died.

O grim is the Irony of Fate:
It switches the man of low estate
And loosens the dogs upon the great.

It lights the fireman to roast the cook;
The fisherman writhes upon the hook,
And the flirt is slain with a tender look.

The undertaker it overtakes;
It saddles the cavalier, and makes
The haughtiest butcher into steaks.

Assist me, gods, to balk the decree!
Nothing I’ll do and nothing I’ll be,
In order that nothing be done to me.

Philosopher Bimm

Republicans think Jonas Bimm
A Democrat gone mad,
And Democrats consider him
Republican and bad.

The Lout reviles him as a Dude
And gives it him right hot;
The Dude condemns his crassitude
And calls him sans culottes.

Derided as an Anglophile
By Anglophobes, forsooth,
As Anglophobe he feels, the while,
The Anglophilic tooth.

The Churchman calls him Atheist;
The Atheists, rough-shod,
Have ridden o’er him long and hissed
“The wretch believes in God!”

The Saints whom clergymen we call
Would kill him if they could;
The Sinners (scientists and all)
Complain that he is good.

All men deplore the difference
Between themselves and him,
And all devise expedients
For paining Jonas Bimm.

I too, with wild demoniac glee,
Would put out both his eyes;
For Mr. Bimm appears to me
Insufferably wise!

Reminded

Beneath my window twilight made
Familiar mysteries of shade.
Faint voices from the darkening down
Were calling vaguely to the town.

Intent upon a low, far gleam
That burned upon the world’s extreme,
I sat, with short reprieve from grief,
And turned the volume, leaf by leaf,
Wherein a hand, long dead, had wrought
A million miracles of thought.
My fingers carelessly unclung
The lettered pages, and among
Them wandered witless, nor divined
The wealth in which, poor fools, they mined.
The soul that should have led their quest
Was dreaming in the level west,
Where a tall tower, stark and still,
Uplifted on a distant hill,
Stood lone and passionless to claim
Its guardian star’s returning flame.

I know not how my dream was broke,
But suddenly my spirit woke
Filled with a foolish fear to look
Upon the hand that clove the book,
Significantly pointing; next
I bent attentive to the text,
And read⁠—and as I read grew old⁠—
The mindless words: “Poor Tom’s a-cold!”

Ah me! to what a subtle touch
The brimming cup resigns its clutch
Upon the wine. Dear God, is’t writ
That hearts their overburden bear
Of bitterness though thou permit
The pranks of Chance, alurk in nooks,
And striking coward blows from books,
And dead hands reaching everywhere?