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 was'nt 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 In puris—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 Our liberty by speech 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. 'T is 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.



THE BROTHERS.

Scene—A lawyer's dreadful den. Enter stall-fed citizen.

LAWYER.—'Mornin'. How-de-do?

CITIZEN.—Sir, same to you. Called as counsel to retain you In a case that I'll explain you. Sad, so sad! Heart almost broke. Hang it! where's my kerchief? Smoke? Brother, sir, and I, of late, Came into a large estate. Brother's—h'm, ha,—rather queer Sometimes (tapping forehead) here. What he needs—you know—a "writ"— Something, eh? that will permit Me to manage, sir, in fine, His estate, as well as mine. 'Course he'll kick; 't will break, I fear, His loving heart—excuse this tear.

LAWYER.—Have you nothing more? All of this you said before— When last night I took your case.

CITIZEN.—Why, sir, your face Ne'er before has met my view!

LAWYER.—Eh? The devil! True: My mistake—it was your brother. But you're very like each other.



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—'t was 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 Hindostan, 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 Vicarious with vain 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, O man, 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 various 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 clue to 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 for a spell, And pulling in their holes as well.

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.

'T was 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' the 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 fathom sheer, as I hope to die!



AN EXPLANATION.

"I never yet exactly could determine Just how it is that the judicial ermine Is kept so safely from predacious vermin."

"It is not so, my friend: though in a garret 'Tis kept in camphor, and you often air it, The vermin will get into it and wear it."



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—'t was 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 "barkeep" 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. 'T is 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: "'T is not a jail, we're sure, Whate'er it may have been when it was newer.

"'T was 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 me 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 friend, 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 't was 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.



ASPIRATION.

No man can truthfully say that he would not like to be President.—William C. Whitney.

Lo! the wild rabbit, happy in the pride Of qualities to meaner beasts denied, Surveys the ass with reverence and fear, Adoring his superior length of ear, And says: "No living creature, lean or fat, But wishes in his heart to be like That!"



DEMOCRACY.

Let slaves and subjects with unvaried psalms Before their sovereign execute salaams; The freeman scorns one idol to adore— Tom, Dick and Harry and himself are four.



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.

What do you gain by cursing Nick For playing her such a scurvy trick? Better go out and some villain find Who serves the devil, and beat him blind.

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 squirms 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 Tough 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?



SALVINI IN AMERICA.

Come, gentlemen—your gold. Thanks: welcome to the show. To hear a story told In words you do not know.

Now, great Salvini, rise And thunder through your tears, Aha! friends, let your eyes Interpret to your ears.

Gods! 't is a goodly game. Observe his stride—how grand! When legs like his declaim Who can misunderstand?

See how that arm goes round. It says, as plain as day: "I love," "The lost is found," "Well met, sir," or, "Away!"

And mark the drawing down Of brows. How accurate The language of that frown: Pain, gentlemen—or hate.

Those of the critic trade Swear it is all as clear As if his tongue were made To fit an English ear.

Hear that Italian phrase! Greek to your sense, 't is true; But shrug, expression, gaze— Well, they are Grecian too.

But it is Art! God wot Its tongue to all is known. Faith! he to whom 't were not Would better hold his own.

Shakespeare says act and word Must match together true. From what you've seen and heard, How can you doubt they do?

Enchanting drama! Mark The crowd "from pit to dome", One box alone is dark— The prompter stays at home.

Stupendous artist! You Are lord of joy and woe: We thrill if you say "Boo," And thrill if you say "Bo."



ANOTHER WAY.

I lay in silence, dead. A woman came And laid a rose upon my breast and said: "May God be merciful." She spoke my name, And added: "It is strange to think him dead.

"He loved me well enough, but 't was his way To speak it lightly." Then, beneath her breath: "Besides"—I knew what further she would say, But then a footfall broke my dream of death.

To-day the words are mine. I lay the rose Upon her breast, and speak her name and deem It strange indeed that she is dead. God knows I had more pleasure in the other dream.



ART.

For Gladstone's portrait five thousand pounds Were paid, 't is said, to Sir John Millais. I cannot help thinking that such fine pay Transcended reason's uttermost bounds.

For it seems to me uncommonly queer That a painted British stateman's price Exceeds the established value thrice Of a living statesman over here.



AN ENEMY TO LAW AND ORDER.

A is defrauded of his land by B, Who's driven from the premises by C. D buys the place with coin of plundered E. "That A's an Anarchist!" says F to G.



TO ONE ACROSS THE WAY.

When at your window radiant you've stood I've sometimes thought—forgive me if I've erred— That some slight thought of me perhaps has stirred Your heart to beat less gently than it should. I know you beautiful; that you are good I hope—or fear—I cannot choose the word, Nor rightly suit it to the thought. I've heard Reason at love's dictation never could. Blindly to this dilemma so I grope, As one whose every pathway has a snare: If you are minded in the saintly fashion Of your pure face my passion's without hope; If not, alas! I equally despair, For what to me were hope without the passion?



THE DEBTOR ABROAD.

Grief for an absent lover, husband, friend, Is barely felt before it comes to end: A score of early consolations serve To modify its mouth's dejected curve. But woes of creditors when debtors flee Forever swell the separating sea. When standing on an alien shore you mark The steady course of some intrepid bark, How sweet to think a tear for you abides, Not all unuseful, in the wave she rides!— That sighs for you commingle in the gale Beneficently bellying her sail!



FORESIGHT.

An "actors' cemetery"! Sure The devil never tires Of planning places to procure The sticks to feed his fires.



A FAIR DIVISION.

Another Irish landlord gone to grass, Slain by the bullets of the tenant class! Pray, good agrarians, what wrong requires Such foul redress? Between you and the squires All Ireland's parted with an even hand— For you have all the ire, they all the land.



GENESIS.

God said: "Let there be Man," and from the clay Adam came forth and, thoughtful, walked away. The matrix whence his body was obtained, An empty, man-shaped cavity, remained All unregarded from that early time Till in a recent storm it filled with slime. Now Satan, envying the Master's power To make the meat himself could but devour, Strolled to the place and, standing by the pool, Exerted all his will to make a fool. A miracle!—from out that ancient hole Rose Morehouse, lacking nothing but a soul. "To give him that I've not the power divine," Said Satan, sadly, "but I'll lend him mine." He breathed it into him, a vapor black, And to this day has never got it back.



LIBERTY.

"'Let there be Liberty!' God said, and, lo! The red skies all were luminous. The glow Struck first Columbia's kindling mountain peaks One hundred and eleven years ago!"

So sang a patriot whom once I saw Descending Bunker's holy hill. With awe I noted that he shone with sacred light, Like Moses with the tables of the Law.

One hundred and eleven years? O small And paltry period compared with all The tide of centuries that flowed and ebbed To etch Yosemite's divided wall!

Ah, Liberty, they sing you always young Whose harps are in your adoration strung (Each swears you are his countrywoman, too, And speak no language but his mother tongue).

And truly, lass, although with shout and horn Man has all-hailed you from creation's morn, I cannot think you old—I think, indeed, You are by twenty centuries unborn.

1886.



THE PASSING OF "BOSS" SHEPHERD.

The sullen church-bell's intermittent moan, The dirge's melancholy monotone, The measured march, the drooping flags, attest A great man's progress to his place of rest. Along broad avenues himself decreed To serve his fellow men's disputed need— Past parks he raped away from robbers' thrift And gave to poverty, wherein to lift Its voice to curse the giver and the gift— Past noble structures that he reared for men To meet in and revile him, tongue and pen, Draws the long retinue of death to show The fit credentials of a proper woe.

"Boss" Shepherd, you are dead. Your hand no more Throws largess to the mobs that ramp and roar For blood of benefactors who disdain Their purity of purpose to explain, Their righteous motive and their scorn of gain. Your period of dream—'twas but a breath— Is closed in the indifference of death. Sealed in your silences, to you alike If hands are lifted to applaud or strike. No more to your dull, inattentive ear Praise of to-day than curse of yesteryear. From the same lips the honied phrases fall That still are bitter from cascades of gall. We note the shame; you in your depth of dark The red-writ testimony cannot mark On every honest cheek; your senses all Locked, incommunicado, in your pall, Know not who sit and blush, who stand and bawl.

"Seven Grecian cities claim great Homer dead, Through which the living Homer begged his bread." So sang, as if the thought had been his own, An unknown bard, improving on a known. "Neglected genius!"—that is sad indeed, But malice better would ignore than heed, And Shepherd's soul, we rightly may suspect, Prayed often for the mercy of neglect When hardly did he dare to leave his door Without a guard behind him and before To save him from the gentlemen that now In cheap and easy reparation bow Their corrigible heads above his corse To counterfeit a grief that's half remorse.

The pageant passes and the exile sleeps, And well his tongue the solemn secret keeps Of the great peace he found afar, until, Death's writ of extradition to fulfill, They brought him, helpless, from that friendly zone To be a show and pastime in his own— A final opportunity to those Who fling with equal aim the stone and rose; That at the living till his soul is freed, This at the body to conceal the deed!

Lone on his hill he's lying to await What added honors may befit his state— The monument, the statue, or the arch (Where knaves may come to weep and dupes to march) Builded by clowns to brutalize the scenes His genius beautified. To get the means, His newly good traducers all are dunned For contributions to the conscience fund. If each subscribe (and pay) one cent 'twill rear A structure taller than their tallest ear.

Washington, May 4, 1903.



TO MAUDE.

Not as two errant spheres together grind With monstrous ruin in the vast of space, Destruction born of that malign embrace, Their hapless peoples all to death consigned— Not so when our intangible worlds of mind, Even mine and yours, each with its spirit race Of beings shadowy in form and face, Shall drift together on some blessed wind. No, in that marriage of gloom and light All miracles of beauty shall be wrought, Attesting a diviner faith than man's; For all my sad-eyed daughters of the night Shall smile on your sweet seraphim of thought, Nor any jealous god forbid the banns.



THE BIRTH OF VIRTUE.

When, long ago, the young world circling flew Through wider reaches of a richer blue, New-eyed, the men and maids saw, manifest, The thoughts untold in one another's breast: Each wish displayed, and every passion learned— A look revealed them as a look discerned. But sating Time with clouds o'ercast their eyes; Desire was hidden, and the lips framed lies. A goddess then, emerging from the dust, Fair Virtue rose, the daughter of Distrust.



STONEMAN IN HEAVEN.

The Seraphs came to Christ, and said: "Behold! The man, presumptuous and overbold, Who boasted that his mercy could excel Thine own, is dead and on his way to Hell."

Gravely the Saviour asked: "What did he do To make his impious assertion true?"

"He was a Governor, releasing all The vilest felons ever held in thrall. No other mortal, since the dawn of time, Has ever pardoned such a mass of crime!"

Christ smiled benignly on the Seraphim: "Yet I am victor, for I pardon him."



THE SCURRIL PRESS.

TOM JONESMITH (loquitur): I've slept right through The night—a rather clever thing to do. How soundly women sleep (looks at his wife.) They're all alike. The sweetest thing in life Is woman when she lies with folded tongue, Its toil completed and its day-song sung. (Thump) That's the morning paper. What a bore That it should be delivered at the door. There ought to be some expeditious way To get it to one. By this long delay The fizz gets off the news (a rap is heard). That's Jane, the housemaid; she's an early bird; She's brought it to the bedroom door, good soul. (Gets up and takes it in.) Upon the whole The system's not so bad a one. What's here? Gad, if they've not got after—listen dear (To sleeping wife)—young Gastrotheos! Well, If Freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell She'll shriek again—with laughter—seeing how They treated Gast. with her. Yet I'll allow 'T is right if he goes dining at The Pup With Mrs. Thing.

WIFE (briskly, waking up): With her? The hussy! Yes, it serves him right.

JONESMITH (continuing to "seek the light"): What's this about old Impycu? That's good! Grip—that's the funny man—says Impy should Be used as a decoy in shooting tramps. I knew old Impy when he had the "stamps" To buy us all out, and he wasn't then So bad a chap to have about. Grip's pen Is just a tickler!—and the world, no doubt, Is better with it than it was without. What? thirteen ladies—Jumping Jove! we know Them nearly all!—who gamble at a low And very shocking game of cards called "draw"! O cracky, how they'll squirm! ha-ha! haw-haw! Let's see what else (wife snores). Well, I'll be blest! A woman doesn't understand a jest. Hello! What, what? the scurvy wretch proceeds To take a fling at me, condemn him! (reads): Tom Jonesmith—my name's Thomas, vulgar cad!—Of the new Shavings Bank—the man's gone mad! That's libelous; I'll have him up for that—Has had his corns cut. Devil take the rat! What business is 't of his, I'd like to know? He didn't have to cut them. Gods! what low And scurril things our papers have become! You skim their contents and you get but scum. Here, Mary, (waking wife) I've been attacked In this vile sheet. By Jove, it is a fact!

WIFE (reading it): How wicked! Who do you Suppose 't was wrote it?

JONESMITH: Who? why, who But Grip, the so-called funny man—he wrote Me up because I'd not discount his note. (Blushes like sunset at the hideous lie— He'll think of one that's better by and by— Throws down the paper on the floor, and treads A lively measure on it—kicks the shreds And patches all about the room, and still Performs his jig with unabated will.)

WIFE (warbling sweetly, like an Elfland horn): Dear, do be careful of that second corn.

STANLEY. Noting some great man's composition vile: A head of wisdom and a heart of guile, A will to conquer and a soul to dare, Joined to the manners of a dancing bear, Fools unaccustomed to the wide survey Of various Nature's compensating sway, Untaught to separate the wheat and chaff, To praise the one and at the other laugh, Yearn all in vain and impotently seek Some flawless hero upon whom to wreak The sycophantic worship of the weak. Not so the wise, from superstition free, Who find small pleasure in the bended knee; Quick to discriminate 'twixt good and bad, And willing in the king to find the cad— No reason seen why genius and conceit, The power to dazzle and the will to cheat, The love of daring and the love of gin, Should not dwell, peaceful, in a single skin. To such, great Stanley, you're a hero still, Despite your cradling in a tub for swill. Your peasant manners can't efface the mark Of light you drew across the Land of Dark.

In you the extremes of character are wed, To serve the quick and villify the dead. Hero and clown! O, man of many sides, The Muse of Truth adores you and derides, And sheds, impartial, the revealing ray Upon your head of gold and feet of clay.



ONE OF THE UNFAIR SEX.

She stood at the ticket-seller's Serenely removing her glove, While hundreds of strugglers and yellers, And some that were good at a shove, Were clustered behind her like bats in a cave and unwilling to speak their love.

At night she still stood at that window Endeavoring her money to reach; The crowds right and left, how they sinned—O, How dreadfully sinned in their speech! Ten miles either way they extended their lines, the historians teach.

She stands there to-day—legislation Has failed to remove her. The trains No longer pull up at that station; And over the ghastly remains Of the army that waited and died of old age fall the snows and the rains.



THE LORD'S PRAYER ON A COIN.

Upon this quarter-eagle's leveled face, The Lord's Prayer, legibly inscribed, I trace. "Our Father which"—the pronoun there is funny, And shows the scribe to have addressed the money— "Which art in Heaven"—an error this, no doubt: The preposition should be stricken out. Needless to quote; I only have designed To praise the frankness of the pious mind Which thought it natural and right to join, With rare significancy, prayer and coin.



A LACKING FACTOR.

"You acted unwisely," I cried, "as you see By the outcome." He calmly eyed me: "When choosing the course of my action," said he, "I had not the outcome to guide me."



THE ROYAL JESTER.

Once on a time, so ancient poets sing, There reigned in Godknowswhere a certain king. So great a monarch ne'er before was seen: He was a hero, even to his queen, In whose respect he held so high a place That none was higher,—nay, not even the ace. He was so just his Parliament declared Those subjects happy whom his laws had spared; So wise that none of the debating throng Had ever lived to prove him in the wrong; So good that Crime his anger never feared, And Beauty boldly plucked him by the beard; So brave that if his army got a beating None dared to face him when he was retreating. This monarch kept a Fool to make his mirth, And loved him tenderly despite his worth. Prompted by what caprice I cannot say, He called the Fool before the throne one day And to that jester seriously said: "I'll abdicate, and you shall reign instead, While I, attired in motley, will make sport To entertain your Majesty and Court."

'T was done and the Fool governed. He decreed The time of harvest and the time of seed; Ordered the rains and made the weather clear, And had a famine every second year; Altered the calendar to suit his freak, Ordaining six whole holidays a week; Religious creeds and sacred books prepared; Made war when angry and made peace when scared. New taxes he inspired; new laws he made; Drowned those who broke them, who observed them, flayed, In short, he ruled so well that all who'd not Been starved, decapitated, hanged or shot Made the whole country with his praises ring, Declaring he was every inch a king; And the High Priest averred 't was very odd If one so competent were not a god.

Meantime, his master, now in motley clad, Wore such a visage, woeful, wan and sad, That some condoled with him as with a brother Who, having lost a wife, had got another. Others, mistaking his profession, often Approached him to be measured for a coffin. For years this highborn jester never broke The silence—he was pondering a joke. At last, one day, in cap-and-bells arrayed, He strode into the Council and displayed A long, bright smile, that glittered in the gloom Like a gilt epithet within a tomb. Posing his bauble like a leader's staff, To give the signal when (and why) to laugh, He brought it down with peremptory stroke And simultaneously cracked his joke!

I can't repeat it, friends. I ne'er could school Myself to quote from any other fool: A jest, if it were worse than mine, would start My tears; if better, it would break my heart. So, if you please, I'll hold you but to state That royal Jester's melancholy fate.

The insulted nation, so the story goes, Rose as one man—the very dead arose, Springing indignant from the riven tomb, And babes unborn leapt swearing from the womb! All to the Council Chamber clamoring went, By rage distracted and on vengeance bent. In that vast hall, in due disorder laid, The tools of legislation were displayed, And the wild populace, its wrath to sate, Seized them and heaved them at the Jester's pate. Mountains of writing paper; pools and seas Of ink, awaiting, to become decrees, Royal approval—and the same in stacks Lay ready for attachment, backed with wax; Pens to make laws, erasers to amend them; With mucilage convenient to extend them; Scissors for limiting their application, And acids to repeal all legislation— These, flung as missiles till the air was dense, Were most offensive weapons of offense, And by their aid the Fool was nigh destroyed. They ne'er had been so harmlessly employed. Whelmed underneath a load of legal cap, His mouth egurgitating ink on tap, His eyelids mucilaginously sealed, His fertile head by scissors made to yield Abundant harvestage of ears, his pelt, In every wrinkle and on every welt, Quickset with pencil-points from feet to gills And thickly studded with a pride of quills, The royal Jester in the dreadful strife Was made (in short) an editor for life!

An idle tale, and yet a moral lurks In this as plainly as in greater works. I shall not give it birth: one moral here Would die of loneliness within a year.



A CAREER IN LETTERS.

When Liberverm resigned the chair Of This or That in college, where For two decades he'd gorged his brain With more than it could well contain, In order to relieve the stress He took to writing for the press. Then Pondronummus said, "I'll help This mine of talent to devel'p;" And straightway bought with coin and credit The Thundergust for him to edit.

The great man seized the pen and ink And wrote so hard he couldn't think; Ideas grew beneath his fist And flew like falcons from his wrist. His pen shot sparks all kinds of ways Till all the rivers were ablaze, And where the coruscations fell Men uttered words I dare not spell.

Eftsoons with corrugated brow, Wet towels bound about his pow, Locked legs and failing appetite, He thought so hard he couldn't write. His soaring fancies, chickenwise, Came home to roost and wouldn't rise. With dimmer light and milder heat His goose-quill staggered o'er the sheet, Then dragged, then stopped; the finish came— He couldn't even write his name. The Thundergust in three short weeks Had risen, roared, and split its cheeks. Said Pondronummus, "How unjust! The storm I raised has laid my dust!"

When, Moneybagger, you have aught Invested in a vein of thought, Be sure you've purchased not, instead, That salted claim, a bookworm's head.



THE FOLLOWING PAIR.

O very remarkable mortal, What food is engaging your jaws And staining with amber their portal? "It's 'baccy I chaws."

And why do you sway in your walking, To right and left many degrees, And hitch up your trousers when talking? "I follers the seas."

Great indolent shark in the rollers, Is "'baccy," too, one of your faults?— You, too, display maculate molars. "I dines upon salts."

Strange diet!—intestinal pain it Is commonly given to nip. And how can you ever obtain it? "I follers the ship."



POLITICAL ECONOMY.

"I beg you to note," said a Man to a Goose, As he plucked from her bosom the plumage all loose, "That pillows and cushions of feathers and beds As warm as maids' hearts and as soft as their heads, Increase of life's comforts the general sum— Which raises the standard of living." "Come, come," The Goose said, impatiently, "tell me or cease, How that is of any advantage to geese." "What, what!" said the man—"you are very obtuse! Consumption no profit to those who produce? No good to accrue to Supply from a grand Progressive expansion, all round, of Demand? Luxurious habits no benefit bring To those who purvey the luxurious thing? Consider, I pray you, my friend, how the growth Of luxury promises—" "Promises," quoth The sufferer, "what?—to what course is it pledged To pay me for being so often defledged?" "Accustomed"—this notion the plucker expressed As he ripped out a handful of down from her breast— "To one kind of luxury, people soon yearn For others and ever for others in turn; And the man who to-night on your feathers will rest, His mutton or bacon or beef to digest, His hunger to-morrow will wish to assuage By dining on goose with a dressing of sage."



VANISHED AT COCK-CROW.

"I've found the secret of your charm," I said, Expounding with complacency my guess. Alas! the charm, even as I named it, fled, For all its secret was unconsciousness.



THE UNPARDONABLE SIN.

I reckon that ye never knew, That dandy slugger, Tom Carew, He had a touch as light an' free As that of any honey-bee; But where it lit there wasn't much To jestify another touch. O, what a Sunday-school it was To watch him puttin' up his paws An' roominate upon their heft— Particular his holy left! Tom was my style—that's all I say; Some others may be equal gay. What's come of him? Dunno, I'm sure— He's dead—which make his fate obscure. I only started in to clear One vital p'int in his career, Which is to say—afore he died He soiled his erming mighty snide. Ye see he took to politics And learnt them statesmen-fellers' tricks; Pulled wires, wore stovepipe hats, used scent, Just like he was the President; Went to the Legislator; spoke Right out agin the British yoke— But that was right. He let his hair Grow long to qualify for Mayor, An' once or twice he poked his snoot In Congress like a low galoot! It had to come—no gent can hope To wrastle God agin the rope. Tom went from bad to wuss. Being dead, I s'pose it oughtn't to be said, For sech inikities as flow From politics ain't fit to know; But, if you think it's actin' white To tell it—Thomas throwed a fight!



INDUSTRIAL DISCONTENT.

As time rolled on the whole world came to be A desolation and a darksome curse; And some one said: "The changes that you see In the fair frame of things, from bad to worse, Are wrought by strikes. The sun withdrew his glimmer Because the moon assisted with her shimmer.

"Then, when poor Luna, straining very hard, Doubled her light to serve a darkling world, He called her 'scab,' and meanly would retard Her rising: and at last the villain hurled A heavy beam which knocked her o'er the Lion Into the nebula of great O'Ryan.

"The planets all had struck some time before, Demanding what they said were equal rights: Some pointing out that others had far more That a fair dividend of satellites. So all went out—though those the best provided, If they had dared, would rather have abided.

"The stars struck too—I think it was because The comets had more liberty than they, And were not bound by any hampering laws, While they were fixed; and there are those who say The comets' tresses nettled poor Altair, An aged orb that hasn't any hair.

"The earth's the only one that isn't in The movement—I suppose because she's watched With horror and disgust how her fair skin Her pranking parasites have fouled and blotched With blood and grease in every labor riot, When seeing any purse or throat to fly at."



TEMPORA MUTANTUR.

"The world is dull," I cried in my despair: "Its myths and fables are no longer fair.

"Roll back thy centuries, O Father Time. To Greece transport me in her golden prime.

"Give back the beautiful old Gods again— The sportive Nymphs, the Dryad's jocund train,

"Pan piping on his reeds, the Naiades, The Sirens singing by the sleepy seas.

"Nay, show me but a Gorgon and I'll dare To lift mine eyes to her peculiar hair

"(The fatal horrors of her snaky pate, That stiffen men into a stony state)

"And die—erecting, as my soul goes hence, A statue of myself, without expense."

Straight as I spoke I heard the voice of Fate: "Look up, my lad, the Gorgon sisters wait."

Raising my eyes, I saw Medusa stand, Stheno, Euryale, on either hand.

I gazed unpetrified and unappalled— The girls had aged and were entirely bald!



CONTENTMENT.

Sleep fell upon my senses and I dreamed Long years had circled since my life had fled. The world was different, and all things seemed Remote and strange, like noises to the dead. And one great Voice there was; and something said: "Posterity is speaking—rightly deemed Infallible:" and so I gave attention, Hoping Posterity my name would mention.

"Illustrious Spirit," said the Voice, "appear! While we confirm eternally thy fame, Before our dread tribunal answer, here, Why do no statues celebrate thy name, No monuments thy services proclaim? Why did not thy contemporaries rear To thee some schoolhouse or memorial college? It looks almighty queer, you must acknowledge."

Up spake I hotly: "That is where you err!" But some one thundered in my ear: "You shan't Be interrupting these proceedings, sir; The question was addressed to General Grant." Some other things were spoken which I can't Distinctly now recall, but I infer, By certain flushings of my cheeks and forehead, Posterity's environment is torrid.

Then heard I (this was in a dream, remark) Another Voice, clear, comfortable, strong, As Grant's great shade, replying from the dark, Said in a tone that rang the earth along, And thrilled the senses of the Judges' throng: "I'd rather you would question why, in park And street, my monuments were not erected Than why they were." Then, waking, I reflected.



THE NEW ENOCH.

Enoch Arden was an able Seaman; hear of his mishap— Not in wild mendacious fable, As 't was told by t' other chap;

For I hold it is a youthful Indiscretion to tell lies, And the writer that is truthful Has the reader that is wise.

Enoch Arden, able seaman, On an isle was cast away, And before he was a freeman Time had touched him up with gray.

Long he searched the fair horizon, Seated on a mountain top; Vessel ne'er he set his eyes on That would undertake to stop.

Seeing that his sight was growing Dim and dimmer, day by day, Enoch said he must be going. So he rose and went away—

Went away and so continued Till he lost his lonely isle: Mr. Arden was so sinewed He could row for many a mile.

Compass he had not, nor sextant, To direct him o'er the sea: Ere 't was known that he was extant, At his widow's home was he.

When he saw the hills and hollows And the streets he could but know, He gave utterance as follows To the sentiments below:

"Blast my tarry toplights! (shiver, Too, my timbers!) but, I say, W'at a larruk to diskiver, I have lost me blessid way!

"W'at, alas, would be my bloomin' Fate if Philip now I see, Which I lammed?—or my old 'oman, Which has frequent basted me?"

Scenes of childhood swam around him At the thought of such a lot: In a swoon his Annie found him And conveyed him to her cot.

'T was the very house, the garden, Where their honeymoon was passed: 'T was the place where Mrs. Arden Would have mourned him to the last.

Ah, what grief she'd known without him! Now what tears of joy she shed! Enoch Arden looked about him: "Shanghaied!"—that was all he said.



DISAVOWAL.

Two bodies are lying in Phoenix Park, Grim and bloody and stiff and stark, And a Land League man with averted eye Crosses himself as he hurries by. And he says to his conscience under his breath: "I have had no hand in this deed of death!"

A Fenian, making a circuit wide And passing them by on the other side, Shudders and crosses himself and cries: "Who says that I did it, he lies, he lies!"

Gingerly stepping across the gore, Pat Satan comes after the two before, Makes, in a solemnly comical way, The sign of the cross and is heard to say: "O dear, what a terrible sight to see, For babes like them and a saint like me!"

1882.



AN AVERAGE.

I ne'er could be entirely fond Of any maiden who's a blonde, And no brunette that e'er I saw Had charms my heart's whole warmth to draw.

Yet sure no girl was ever made Just half of light and half of shade. And so, this happy mean to get, I love a blonde and a brunette.



WOMAN.

Study good women and ignore the rest, For he best knows the sex who knows the best.



INCURABLE.

From pride, joy, hate, greed, melancholy— From any kind of vice, or folly, Bias, propensity or passion That is in prevalence and fashion, Save one, the sufferer or lover May, by the grace of God, recover: Alone that spiritual tetter, The zeal to make creation better, Glows still immedicably warmer. Who knows of a reformed reformer?



THE PUN.

Hail, peerless Pun! thou last and best, Most rare and excellent bequest Of dying idiot to the wit He died of, rat-like, in a pit!

Thyself disguised, in many a way Thou let'st thy sudden splendor play, Adorning all where'er it turns, As the revealing bull's-eye burns, Of the dim thief, and plays its trick Upon the lock he means to pick.

Yet sometimes, too, thou dost appear As boldly as a brigadier Tricked out with marks and signs, all o'er, Of rank, brigade, division, corps, To show by every means he can An officer is not a man; Or naked, with a lordly swagger, Proud as a cur without a wagger, Who says: "See simple worth prevail— All dog, sir—not a bit of tail!"

'T is then men give thee loudest welcome, As if thou wert a soul from Hell come.

O obvious Pun! thou hast the grace Of skeleton clock without a case— With all its boweling displayed, And all its organs on parade.

Dear Pun, you're common ground of bliss, Where Punch and I can meet and kiss; Than thee my wit can stoop no low'r— No higher his does ever soar.



A PARTISAN'S PROTEST.

O statesmen, what would you be at, With torches, flags and bands? You make me first throw up my hat, And then my hands.



TO NANINE.

Dear, if I never saw your face again; If all the music of your voice were mute As that of a forlorn and broken lute; If only in my dreams I might attain The benediction of your touch, how vain Were Faith to justify the old pursuit Of happiness, or Reason to confute The pessimist philosophy of pain. Yet Love not altogether is unwise, For still the wind would murmur in the corn, And still the sun would splendor all the mere; And I—I could not, dearest, choose but hear Your voice upon the breeze and see your eyes Shine in the glory of the summer morn.



VICE VERSA.

Down in the state of Maine, the story goes, A woman, to secure a lapsing pension, Married a soldier—though the good Lord knows That very common act scarce calls for mention. What makes it worthy to be writ and read— The man she married had been nine hours dead!

Now, marrying a corpse is not an act Familiar to our daily observation, And so I crave her pardon if the fact Suggests this interesting speculation: Should some mischance restore the man to life Would she be then a widow, or a wife?

Let casuists contest the point; I'm not Disposed to grapple with so great a matter. 'T would tie my thinker in a double knot And drive me staring mad as any hatter— Though I submit that hatters are, in fact, Sane, and all other human beings cracked.

Small thought have I of Destiny or Chance; Luck seems to me the same thing as Intention; In metaphysics I could ne'er advance, And think it of the Devil's own invention. Enough of joy to know though when I wed I must be married, yet I may be dead.



A BLACK-LIST.

"Resolved that we will post," the tradesmen say, "All names of debtors who do never pay." "Whose shall be first?" inquires the ready scribe— "Who are the chiefs of the marauding tribe?" Lo! high Parnassus, lifting from the plain, Upon his hoary peak, a noble fane! Within that temple all the names are scrolled Of village bards upon a slab of gold; To that bad eminence, my friend, aspire, And copy thou the Roll of Fame, entire. Yet not to total shame those names devote, But add in mercy this explaining note: "These cheat because the law makes theft a crime, And they obey all laws but laws of rhyme."



A BEQUEST TO MUSIC.

"Let music flourish!" So he said and died. Hark! ere he's gone the minstrelsy begins: The symphonies ascend, a swelling tide, Melodious thunders fill the welkin wide— The grand old lawyers, chinning on their chins!



AUTHORITY.

"Authority, authority!" they shout Whose minds, not large enough to hold a doubt, Some chance opinion ever entertain, By dogma billeted upon their brain. "Ha!" they exclaim with choreatic glee, "Here's Dabster if you won't give in to me— Dabster, sir, Dabster, to whom all men look With reverence!" The fellow wrote a book. It matters not that many another wight Has thought more deeply, could more wisely write On t' other side—that you yourself possess Knowledge where Dabster did but faintly guess. God help you if ambitious to persuade The fools who take opinion ready-made And "recognize authorities." Be sure No tittle of their folly they'll abjure For all that you can say. But write it down, Publish and die and get a great renown— Faith! how they'll snap it up, misread, misquote, Swear that they had a hand in all you wrote, And ride your fame like monkeys on a goat!



THE PSORIAD.

The King of Scotland, years and years ago, Convened his courtiers in a gallant row And thus addressed them:

"Gentle sirs, from you Abundant counsel I have had, and true: What laws to make to serve the public weal; What laws of Nature's making to repeal; What old religion is the only true one, And what the greater merit of some new one; What friends of yours my favor have forgot; Which of your enemies against me plot. In harvests ample to augment my treasures, Behold the fruits of your sagacious measures! The punctual planets, to their periods just, Attest your wisdom and approve my trust. Lo! the reward your shining virtues bring: The grateful placemen bless their useful king! But while you quaff the nectar of my favor I mean somewhat to modify its flavor By just infusing a peculiar dash Of tonic bitter in the calabash. And should you, too abstemious, disdain it, Egad! I'll hold your noses till you drain it!

"You know, you dogs, your master long has felt A keen distemper in the royal pelt— A testy, superficial irritation, Brought home, I fancy, from some foreign nation. For this a thousand simples you've prescribed— Unguents external, draughts to be imbibed. You've plundered Scotland of its plants, the seas You've ravished, and despoiled the Hebrides, To brew me remedies which, in probation, Were sovereign only in their application. In vain, and eke in pain, have I applied Your flattering unctions to my soul and hide: Physic and hope have been my daily food— I've swallowed treacle by the holy rood!

"Your wisdom, which sufficed to guide the year And tame the seasons in their mad career, When set to higher purposes has failed me And added anguish to the ills that ailed me. Nor that alone, but each ambitious leech His rivals' skill has labored to impeach By hints equivocal in secret speech. For years, to conquer our respective broils, We've plied each other with pacific oils. In vain: your turbulence is unallayed, My flame unquenched; your rioting unstayed; My life so wretched from your strife to save it That death were welcome did I dare to brave it. With zeal inspired by your intemperate pranks, My subjects muster in contending ranks. Those fling their banners to the startled breeze To champion some royal ointment; these The standard of some royal purge display And 'neath that ensign wage a wasteful fray! Brave tongues are thundering from sea to sea, Torrents of sweat roll reeking o'er the lea! My people perish in their martial fear, And rival bagpipes cleave the royal ear!

"Now, caitiffs, tremble, for this very hour Your injured sovereign shall assert his power! Behold this lotion, carefully compound Of all the poisons you for me have found— Of biting washes such as tan the skin, And drastic drinks to vex the parts within. What aggravates an ailment will produce— I mean to rub you with this dreadful juice! Divided counsels you no more shall hatch— At last you shall unanimously scratch. Kneel, villains, kneel, and doff your shirts—God bless us! They'll seem, when you resume them, robes of Nessus!"

The sovereign ceased, and, sealing what he spoke, From Arthur's Seat[1] confirming thunders broke. The conscious culprits, to their fate resigned, Sank to their knees, all piously inclined. This act, from high Ben Lomond where she floats, The thrifty goddess, Caledonia, notes. Glibly as nimble sixpence, down she tilts Headlong, and ravishes away their kilts, Tears off each plaid and all their shirts discloses, Removes each shirt and their broad backs exposes. The king advanced—then cursing fled amain Dashing the phial to the stony plain (Where't straight became a fountain brimming o'er, Whence Father Tweed derives his liquid store) For lo! already on each back sans stitch The red sign manual of the Rosy Witch!

[Footnote 1: A famous height overlooking Edinburgh.]



ONEIROMANCY.

I fell asleep and dreamed that I Was flung, like Vulcan, from the sky; Like him was lamed—another part: His leg was crippled and my heart. I woke in time to see my love Conceal a letter in her glove.



PEACE.

When lion and lamb have together lain down Spectators cry out, all in chorus; "The lamb doesn't shrink nor the lion frown— A miracle's working before us!"

But 't is patent why Hot-head his wrath holds in, And Faint-heart her terror and loathing; For the one's but an ass in a lion's skin, The other a wolf in sheep's clothing.



THANKSGIVING.

The Superintendent of an Almshouse. A Pauper.

SUPERINTENDENT:

So you're unthankful—you'll not eat the bird? You sit about the place all day and gird. I understand you'll not attend the ball That's to be given to-night in Pauper Hall.

PAUPER:

Why, that is true, precisely as you've heard: I have no teeth and I will eat no bird.

SUPERINTENDENT:

Ah! see how good is Providence. Because Of teeth He has denuded both your jaws The fowl's made tender; you can overcome it By suction; or at least—well, you can gum it, Attesting thus the dictum of the preachers That Providence is good to all His creatures— Turkeys excepted. Come, ungrateful friend, If our Thanksgiving dinner you'll attend You shall say grace—ask God to bless at least The soft and liquid portions of the feast.

PAUPER.

Without those teeth my speech is rather thick— He'll hardly understand Gum Arabic. No, I'll not dine to-day. As to the ball, 'Tis known to you that I've no legs at all. I had the gout—hereditary; so, As it could not be cornered in my toe They cut my legs off in the fond belief That shortening me would make my anguish brief. Lacking my legs I could not prosecute With any good advantage a pursuit; And so, because my father chose to court Heaven's favor with his ortolans and Port (Thanksgiving every day!) the Lord supplied Saws for my legs, an almshouse for my pride And, once a year, a bird for my inside. No, I'll not dance—my light fantastic toe Took to its heels some twenty years ago. Some small repairs would be required for putting My feelings on a saltatory footing.

(Sings)

O the legless man's an unhappy chap— Tum-hi, tum-hi, tum-he o'haddy. The favors o' fortune fall not in his lap— Tum-hi, tum-heedle-do hum. The plums of office avoid his plate No matter how much he may stump the State— Tum-hi, ho-heeee. The grass grows never beneath his feet, But he cannot hope to make both ends meet— Tum-hi. With a gleeless eye and a somber heart, He plays the role of his mortal part: Wholly himself he can never be. O, a soleless corporation is he! Tum.

SUPERINTENDENT:

The chapel bell is calling, thankless friend, Balls you may not, but church you shall, attend. Some recognition cannot be denied To the great mercy that has turned aside The sword of death from us and let it fall Upon the people's necks in Montreal; That spared our city, steeple, roof and dome, And drowned the Texans out of house and home; Blessed all our continent with peace, to flood The Balkan with a cataclysm of blood. Compared with blessings of so high degree, Your private woes look mighty small—to me.



L'AUDACE.

Daughter of God! Audacity divine— Of clowns the terror and of brains the sign— Not thou the inspirer of the rushing fool, Not thine of idiots the vocal drool: Thy bastard sister of the brow of brass, Presumption, actuates the charging ass. Sky-born Audacity! of thee who sings Should strike with freer hand than mine the strings; The notes should mount on pinions true and strong, For thou, the subject shouldst sustain the song, Till angels lean from Heaven, a breathless throng! Alas! with reeling heads and wavering tails, They (notes, not angels) drop and the hymn fails; The minstrel's tender fingers and his thumbs Are torn to rags upon the lyre he strums. Have done! the lofty thesis makes demand For stronger voices and a harder hand: Night-howling apes to make the notes aspire, And Poet Riley's fist to slug the rebel wire!



THE GOD'S VIEW-POINT.

Cheeta Raibama Chunder Sen, The wisest and the best of men, Betook him to the place where sat With folded feet upon a mat Of precious stones beneath a palm, In sweet and everlasting calm, That ancient and immortal gent, The God of Rational Content. As tranquil and unmoved as Fate, The deity reposed in state, With palm to palm and sole to sole, And beaded breast and beetling jowl, And belly spread upon his thighs, And costly diamonds for eyes. As Chunder Sen approached and knelt To show the reverence he felt; Then beat his head upon the sod To prove his fealty to the god; And then by gestures signified The other sentiments inside; The god's right eye (as Chunder Sen, The wisest and the best of men, Half-fancied) grew by just a thought More narrow than it truly ought. Yet still that prince of devotees, Persistent upon bended knees And elbows bored into the earth, Declared the god's exceeding worth, And begged his favor. Then at last, Within that cavernous and vast Thoracic space was heard a sound Like that of water underground— A gurgling note that found a vent At mouth of that Immortal Gent In such a chuckle as no ear Had e'er been privileged to hear!

Cheeta Raibama Chunder Sen, The wisest, greatest, best of men, Heard with a natural surprise That mighty midriff improvise. And greater yet the marvel was When from between those massive jaws Fell words to make the views more plain The god was pleased to entertain: "Cheeta Raibama Chunder Sen," So ran the rede in speech of men— "Foremost of mortals in assent To creed of Rational Content, Why come you here to impetrate A blessing on your scurvy pate? Can you not rationally be Content without disturbing me? Can you not take a hint—a wink— Of what of all this rot I think? Is laughter lost upon you quite, To check you in your pious rite? What! know you not we gods protest That all religion is a jest? You take me seriously?—you About me make a great ado (When I but wish to be alone) With attitudes supine and prone, With genuflexions and with prayers, And putting on of solemn airs, To draw my mind from the survey Of Rational Content away! Learn once for all, if learn you can, This truth, significant to man: A pious person is by odds The one most hateful to the gods." Then stretching forth his great right hand, Which shadowed all that sunny land, That deity bestowed a touch Which Chunder Sen not overmuch Enjoyed—a touch divine that made The sufferer hear stars! They played And sang as on Creation's morn When spheric harmony was born.

Cheeta Raibama Chunder Sen, The most astonished man of men, Fell straight asleep, and when he woke The deity nor moved nor spoke, But sat beneath that ancient palm In sweet and everlasting calm.



THE AESTHETES.

The lily cranks, the lily cranks, The loppy, loony lasses! They multiply in rising ranks To execute their solemn pranks, They moon along in masses. Blow, sweet lily, in the shade! O, Sunflower decorate the dado!

The maiden ass, the maiden ass, The tall and tailless jenny! In limp attire as green as grass, She stands, a monumental brass, The one of one too many. Blow, sweet lily, in the shade! O, Sunflower decorate the dado!



JULY FOURTH.

God said: "Let there be noise." The dawning fire Of Independence gilded every spire.



WITH MINE OWN PETARD.

Time was the local poets sang their songs Beneath their breath in terror of the thongs I snapped about their shins. Though mild the stroke Bards, like the conies, are "a feeble folk," Fearing all noises but the one they make Themselves—at which all other mortals quake. Now from their cracked and disobedient throats, Like rats from sewers scampering, their notes Pour forth to move, where'er the season serves, If not our legs to dance, at least our nerves; As once a ram's-horn solo maddened all The sober-minded stones in Jerich's wall. A year's exemption from the critic's curse Mends the bard's courage but impairs his verse. Thus poolside frogs, when croaking in the night, Are frayed to silence by a meteor's flight, Or by the sudden plashing of a stone From some adjacent cottage garden thrown, But straight renew the song with double din Whene'er the light goes out or man goes in. Shall I with arms unbraced (my casque unlatched, My falchion pawned, my buckler, too, attached) Resume the cuishes and the broad cuirass, Accomplishing my body all in brass, And arm in battle royal to oppose A village poet singing through the nose, Or strolling troubadour his lyre who strums With clumsy hand whose fingers all are thumbs? No, let them rhyme; I fought them once before And stilled their songs—but, Satan! how they swore!— Cuffed them upon the mouth whene'er their throats They cleared for action with their sweetest notes; Twisted their ears (they'd oft tormented mine) And damned them roundly all along the line; Clubbed the whole crew from the Parnassian slopes, A wreck of broken heads and broken hopes! What gained I so? I feathered every curse Launched at the village bards with lilting verse. The town approved and christened me (to show its High admiration) Chief of Local Poets!



CONSTANCY.

Dull were the days and sober, The mountains were brown and bare, For the season was sad October And a dirge was in the air.

The mated starlings flew over To the isles of the southern sea. She wept for her warrior lover— Wept and exclaimed: "Ah, me!

"Long years have I mourned my darling In his battle-bed at rest; And it's O, to be a starling, With a mate to share my nest!"

The angels pitied her sorrow, Restoring her warrior's life; And he came to her arms on the morrow To claim her and take her to wife.

An aged lover—a portly, Bald lover, a trifle too stiff, With manners that would have been courtly, And would have been graceful, if—

If the angels had only restored him Without the additional years That had passed since the enemy bored him To death with their long, sharp spears.

As it was, he bored her, and she rambled Away with her father's young groom, And the old lover smiled as he ambled Contentedly back to the tomb.



SIRES AND SONS.

Wild wanton Luxury lays waste the land With difficulty tilled by Thrift's hard hand! Then dies the State!—and, in its carcass found, The millionaires, all maggot-like, abound. Alas! was it for this that Warren died, And Arnold sold himself to t' other side, Stark piled at Bennington his British dead, And Gates at Camden, Lee at Monmouth, fled?— For this that Perry did the foeman fleece, And Hull surrender to preserve the peace? Degenerate countrymen, renounce, I pray, The slothful ease, the luxury, the gay And gallant trappings of this idle life, And be more fit for one another's wife.



A CHALLENGE.

A bull imprisoned in a stall Broke boldly the confining wall, And found himself, when out of bounds, Within a washerwoman's grounds. Where, hanging on a line to dry, A crimson skirt inflamed his eye. With bellowings that woke the dead, He bent his formidable head, With pointed horns and gnarly forehead; Then, planting firm his shoulders horrid, Began, with rage made half insane, To paw the arid earth amain, Flinging the dust upon his flanks In desolating clouds and banks, The while his eyes' uneasy white Betrayed his doubt what foe the bright Red tent concealed, perchance, from sight. The garment, which, all undismayed, Had never paled a single shade, Now found a tongue—a dangling sock, Left carelessly inside the smock: "I must insist, my gracious liege, That you'll be pleased to raise the siege: My colors I will never strike. I know your sex—you're all alike. Some small experience I've had— You're not the first I've driven mad."



TWO SHOWS.

The showman (blessing in a thousand shapes!) Parades a "School of Educated Apes!" Small education's needed, I opine, Or native wit, to make a monkey shine; The brute exhibited has naught to do But ape the larger apes who come to view— The hoodlum with his horrible grimace, Long upper lip and furtive, shuffling pace, Significant reminders of the time When hunters, not policemen, made him climb; The lady loafer with her draggling "trail," That free translation of an ancient tail; The sand-lot quadrumane in hairy suit, Whose heels are thumbs perverted by the boot; The painted actress throwing down the gage To elder artists of the sylvan stage, Proving that in the time of Noah's flood Two ape-skins held her whole profession's blood; The critic waiting, like a hungry pup, To write the school—perhaps to eat it—up, As chance or luck occasion may reveal To earn a dollar or maraud a meal. To view the school of apes these creatures go, Unconscious that themselves are half the show. These, if the simian his course but trim To copy them as they have copied him, Will call him "educated." Of a verity There's much to learn by study of posterity.



A POET'S HOPE.

'Twas a weary-looking mortal, and he wandered near the portal Of the melancholy City of the Discontented Dead. He was pale and worn exceeding and his manner was unheeding, As if it could not matter what he did nor what he said.

"Sacred stranger"—I addressed him with a reverence befitting The austere, unintermitting, dread solemnity he wore; 'Tis the custom, too, prevailing in that vicinage when hailing One who possibly may be a person lately "gone before"—

"Sacred stranger, much I ponder on your evident dejection, But my carefulest reflection leaves the riddle still unread. How do you yourself explain your dismal tendency to wander By the melancholy City of the Discontented Dead?"

Then that solemn person, pausing in the march that he was making, Roused himself as if awaking, fixed his dull and stony eye On my countenance and, slowly, like a priest devout and holy, Chanted in a mournful monotone the following reply:

"O my brother, do not fear it; I'm no disembodied spirit— I am Lampton, the Slang Poet, with a price upon my head. I am watching by this portal for some late lamented mortal To arise in his disquietude and leave his earthy bed.

"Then I hope to take possession and pull in the earth above me And, renouncing my profession, ne'er be heard of any more. For there's not a soul to love me and no living thing respects me, Which so painfully affects me that I fain would 'go before.'"

Then I felt a deep compassion for the gentleman's dejection, For privation of affection would refrigerate a frog. So I said: "If nothing human, and if neither man nor woman Can appreciate the fashion of your merit—buy a dog."



THE WOMAN AND THE DEVIL.

When Man and Woman had been made, All but the disposition, The Devil to the workshop strayed, And somehow gained admission.

The Master rested from his work, For this was on a Sunday, The man was snoring like a Turk, Content to wait till Monday.

"Too bad!" the Woman cried; "Oh, why, Does slumber not benumb me? A disposition! Oh, I die To know if 'twill become me!"

The Adversary said: "No doubt 'Twill be extremely fine, ma'am, Though sure 'tis long to be without— I beg to lend you mine, ma'am."

The Devil's disposition when She'd got, of course she wore it, For she'd no disposition then, Nor now has, to restore it.



TWO ROGUES.

Dim, grim, and silent as a ghost, The sentry occupied his post, To all the stirrings of the night Alert of ear and sharp of sight. A sudden something—sight or sound, About, above, or underground, He knew not what, nor where—ensued, Thrilling the sleeping solitude. The soldier cried: "Halt! Who goes there?" The answer came: "Death—in the air." "Advance, Death—give the countersign, Or perish if you cross that line!" To change his tone Death thought it wise— Reminded him they 'd been allies Against the Russ, the Frank, the Turk, In many a bloody bit of work. "In short," said he, "in every weather We've soldiered, you and I, together." The sentry would not let him pass. "Go back," he growled, "you tiresome ass— Go back and rest till the next war, Nor kill by methods all abhor: Miasma, famine, filth and vice, With plagues of locusts, plagues of lice, Foul food, foul water, and foul gases, Rank exhalations from morasses. If you employ such low allies This business you will vulgarize. Renouncing then the field of fame To wallow in a waste of shame, I'll prostitute my strength and lurk About the country doing work— These hands to labor I'll devote, Nor cut, by Heaven, another throat!"



BEECHER.

So, Beecher's dead. His was a great soul, too— Great as a giant organ is, whose reeds Hold in them all the souls of all the creeds That man has ever taught and never knew.

When on this mighty instrument He laid His hand Who fashioned it, our common moan Was suppliant in its thundering. The tone Grew more vivacious when the Devil played.

No more those luring harmonies we hear, And lo! already men forget the sound. They turn, retracing all the dubious ground O'er which it led them, pigwise, by the ear.



NOT GUILTY.

"I saw your charms in another's arms," Said a Grecian swain with his blood a-boil; "And he kissed you fair as he held you there, A willing bird in a serpent's coil!"

The maid looked up from the cinctured cup Wherein she was crushing the berries red, Pain and surprise in her honest eyes— "It was only one o' those gods," she said.



PRESENTIMENT.

With saintly grace and reverent tread, She walked among the graves with me; Her every foot-fall seemed to be A benediction on the dead.

The guardian spirit of the place She seemed, and I some ghost forlorn Surprised in the untimely morn She made with her resplendent face.

Moved by some waywardness of will, Three paces from the path apart She stepped and stood—my prescient heart Was stricken with a passing chill.

The folk-lore of the years agone Remembering, I smiled and thought: "Who shudders suddenly at naught, His grave is being trod upon."

But now I know that it was more Than idle fancy. O, my sweet, I did not think such little feet Could make a buried heart so sore!



A STUDY IN GRAY.

I step from the door with a shiver (This fog is uncommonly cold) And ask myself: What did I give her?— The maiden a trifle gone-old, With the head of gray hair that was gold.

Ah, well, I suppose 'twas a dollar, And doubtless the change is correct, Though it's odd that it seems so much smaller Than what I'd a right to expect. But you pay when you dine, I reflect.

So I walk up the street—'twas a saunter A score of years back, when I strolled From this door; and our talk was all banter Those days when her hair was of gold, And the sea-fog less searching and cold.

I button my coat (for I'm shaken, And fevered a trifle, and flushed With the wine that I ought to have taken,) Time was, at this coat I'd have blushed, Though truly, 'tis cleverly brushed.

A score? Why, that isn't so very Much time to have lost from a life. There's reason enough to be merry: I've not fallen down in the strife, But marched with the drum and the fife.

If Hope, when she lured me and beckoned, Had pushed at my shoulders instead, And Fame, on whose favors I reckoned, Had laureled the worthiest head, I could garland the years that are dead.

Believe me, I've held my own, mostly Through all of this wild masquerade; But somehow the fog is more ghostly To-night, and the skies are more grayed, Like the locks of the restaurant maid.

If ever I'd fainted and faltered I'd fancy this did but appear; But the climate, I'm certain, has altered— Grown colder and more austere Than it was in that earlier year.

The lights, too, are strangely unsteady, That lead from the street to the quay. I think they'll go out—and I'm ready To follow. Out there in the sea The fog-bell is calling to me.



A PARADOX.

"If life were not worth having," said the preacher, "'T would have in suicide one pleasant feature." "An error," said the pessimist, "you're making: What's not worth having cannot be worth taking."



FOR MERIT.

To Parmentier Parisians raise A statue fine and large: He cooked potatoes fifty ways, Nor ever led a charge.

"Palmam qui meruit"—the rest You knew as well as I; And best of all to him that best Of sayings will apply.

Let meaner men the poet's bays Or warrior's medal wear; Who cooks potatoes fifty ways Shall bear the palm—de terre.



A BIT OF SCIENCE.

What! photograph in colors? 'Tis a dream And he who dreams it is not overwise, If colors are vibration they but seem, And have no being. But if Tyndall lies, Why, come, then—photograph my lady's eyes. Nay, friend, you can't; the splendor of their blue, As on my own beclouded orbs they rest, To naught but vibratory motion's due, As heart, head, limbs and all I am attest. How could her eyes, at rest themselves, be making In me so uncontrollable a shaking?



THE TABLES TURNED.

Over the man the street car ran, And the driver did never grin. "O killer of men, pray tell me when Your laughter means to begin.