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.
