Shapes of Clay

    Who haggles o'er his hire with Fate
  Is better bargainer than bard.
  What! count the effort labor lost
    When thy good angel holds the reed?
    It were a sorry thing indeed
  To stay him till thy palm be crossed.
  'The laborer is worthy'—nay,
    The sacred ministry of song
    Is rapture!—'t were a grievous wrong
  To fix a wages-rate for play.

A FOOL.

  Says Anderson, Theosophist:
  'Among the many that exist
         In modern halls,
  Some lived in ancient Egypt's clime
  And in their childhood saw the prime
         Of Karnak's walls.'
  Ah, Anderson, if that is true
  'T is my conviction, sir, that you
         Are one of those
  That once resided by the Nile,
  Peer to the sacred Crocodile,
         Heir to his woes.
  My judgment is, the holy Cat
  Mews through your larynx (and your hat)
         These many years.
  Through you the godlike Onion brings
  Its melancholy sense of things,
         And moves to tears.
  In you the Bull divine again
  Bellows and paws the dusty plain,
      To nature true.
  I challenge not his ancient hate
  But, lowering my knurly pate,
      Lock horns with you.
  And though Reincarnation prove
  A creed too stubborn to remove,
      And all your school
  Of Theosophs I cannot scare—
  All the more earnestly I swear
      That you're a fool.
  You'll say that this is mere abuse
  Without, in fraying you, a use.
      That's plain to see
  With only half an eye. Come, now,
  Be fair, be fair,—consider how
      It eases me!

THE HUMORIST.

  'What is that, mother?'
                           'The funny man, child.
  His hands are black, but his heart is mild.'
  'May I touch him, mother?'
                           ''T were foolishly done:
  He is slightly touched already, my son.'
  'O, why does he wear such a ghastly grin?'
  'That's the outward sign of a joke within.'
  'Will he crack it, mother?'
                            'Not so, my saint;
  'T is meant for the Saturday Livercomplaint.'
  'Does he suffer, mother?'
                          'God help him, yes!—
  A thousand and fifty kinds of distress.'
  'What makes him sweat so?'
                           'The demons that lurk
  In the fear of having to go to work.'
  'Why doesn't he end, then, his life with a rope?'
  'Abolition of Hell has deprived him of hope.'

MONTEFIORE.

  I saw—'twas in a dream, the other night—
  A man whose hair with age was thin and white:
    One hundred years had bettered by his birth,
  And still his step was firm, his eye was bright.
  Before him and about him pressed a crowd.
  Each head in reverence was bared and bowed,
    And Jews and Gentiles in a hundred tongues