Shapes of Clay

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,