Shapes of Clay

  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 human body
  Done to a nutty brown, and a tear toddy
  To give me appetite; and as for drink,
  About a half a jug of blood, I think,
  Will do; for still I love the red, 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.

BY A DEFEATED LITIGANT.

  Liars for witnesses; for lawyers brutes
  Who lose their tempers to retrieve 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 honest person the accused—
  Thy courts, my country, all these awful years,
  Move fools to laughter and the wise to tears.

AN EPITAPH.

  Here lies Greer Harrison, a well cracked louse—
  So small a tenant of so big a house!
  He joyed in fighting with his eyes (his fist
  Prudently pendent from a peaceful wrist)
  And loved to loll on the Parnassian mount,
  His pen to suck and all his thumbs to count,—
  What poetry he'd written but for lack
  Of skill, when he had counted, to count back!
  Alas, no more he'll climb the sacred steep
  To wake the lyre and put the world to sleep!
  To his rapt lip his soul no longer springs
  And like a jaybird from a knot-hole sings.
  No more the clubmen, pickled with his wine,
  Spread wide their ears and hiccough 'That's divine!'
  The genius of his purse no longer draws
  The pleasing thunders of a paid applause.
  All silent now, nor sound nor sense remains,
  Though riddances of worms improve his brains.
  All his no talents to the earth revert,
  And Fame concludes the record: 'Dirt to dirt!'

THE POLITICIAN.

  'Let Glory's sons manipulate
  The tiller of the Ship of State.
  Be mine the humble, useful toil
  To work the tiller of the soil.'

AN INSCRIPTION

  For a Proposed Monument in Washington to Him who Made it Beautiful.