out,” the voice replied,
“And so’s the door—jes’ step inside.”
Then through the darkness I discerned
A hovel, into which I turned.
Groping about beneath its thatch,
I struck my head and then a match.
A candle by that gleam betrayed
Soon lent paraffinaceous aid.
A pallid, bald and thin old man
I saw, who this complaint began:
“Through summer suns and winter snows
I sets observin’ of my toes.
“I rambles with increasin’ pain
The path of duty, but in vain.
“Rewards and honors pass me by—
No Congress hears this raven cry!”
Filled with astonishment, I spoke:
“Thou ancient raven, why this croak?
“With observation of your toes
What Congress has to do, God knows!
“And swallow me if e’er I knew
That one could sit and ramble too!”
To answer me that ancient swain
Took up his parable again:
“Through winter snows and summer suns
A Weather Bureau here I runs.
“I calls the turn, and can declare
Jes’ when she’ll storm and when she’ll fair.
“Three times a day I sings out clear
The probs to all which wants to hear.
“Some weather stations run with light
Frivolity is seldom right.
“A scientist from times remote,
In Scienceville my birth is wrote.
“And when I h’ist the ‘rainy’ sign
Jes’ take your clo’es in off the line.”
“Not mine, O marvelous old man,
The methods of your art to scan,
“Yet here no instruments there be—
Nor ’ometer nor ’scope I see.
“Did you (if questions you permit)
At the asylum leave your kit?”
That strange old man with motion rude
Rose to surprising altitude.
“Tools (and sarcazzems too) I scorns—
I tells the weather by my corns.
“No doors and windows here you see—
The wind and m’isture enters free.
“No fires nor lights, no wool nor fur
Here falsifies the tempercher.
“My corns unleathered I expose
To feel the rain’s foretellin’ throes.
“No stockin’ from their ears keeps out
The comin’ tempest’s warnin’ shout.
“Sich delicacy some has got
They know next summer’s to be hot.
“This here one says (for that he’s best):
‘Storm center passin’ to the west.’
“This feller’s vitals is transfixed
With frost for Janawary sixt’.
“One chap jes’ now is occypied
In fig’rin on next Fridy’s tide.
“I’ve shaved this cuss so thin and true
He’ll spot a fog in South Peru.
“Sech are my tools, which ne’er a swell
Observatory can excel.
“By long a-studyin’ their throbs
I catches onto all the probs.”
Much more, no doubt, he would have said,
But suddenly he turned and fled;
For in mine eye’s indignant green
Lay storms that he had not foreseen,
Concerning which, as Fear appeals,
To Speed, his toes had told his heels.
T. A. H.
Yes, he was that, or that, as you prefer—
Did so-and-so, though, faith, it wasn’t all;
Lived like a fool, or a philosopher,
And had whatever’s needful to a fall.
As rough inflections on a planet merge
In the true bend of the gigantic sphere,
Nor mar the perfect circle of its verge,
So in the survey of his worth the small
Asperities of spirit disappear,
Lost in the grander curves of character.
He lately was hit hard: none knew but I
The strength and terror of that ghastly stroke—
Not even herself. He uttered not a cry,
But set his teeth and made a revelry;
Drank like a devil—staining sometimes red
The goblet’s edge; diced with his conscience; spread,
Like Sisyphus, a feast for Death, and spoke
His welcome in a tongue so long forgot
That even his ancient guest remembered not
What race had cursed him in it. Thus my friend
Still conjugating with each failing sense
The verb “to die” in every mood and tense,
Pursued his awful humor to the end.
When like a stormy dawn the crimson broke
From his white lips he smiled and mutely bled,
And, having meanly lived, is grandly dead.
My Monument
It is pleasant to think, as I’m watching my ink
A-drying along my paper,
That a monument fine will surely be mine
When death has extinguished my taper.
From each pitiless scribe of the critic tribe
Purged clean of all sentiments narrow,
A pebble will mark his respect for the stark
Stiff body that’s under the barrow.
Thus stone upon stone by reviewers thrown,
Will make my celebrity deathless.
O, I wish I could think, as I gaze at my ink,
They’d wait till my carcass is breathless.
Mad
O ye who push and fight
To hear a wanton sing—
Who utter the delight
That has the bogus ring—
O men mature in years,
In understanding young,
The membranes of whose ears
She tickles with her tongue—
O wives and daughters sweet,
Who call it love of art
To kiss a woman’s feet
That crush a woman’s heart—
O prudent dams and sires,
Your docile young who bring
To see how man admires
A sinner if she sing—
O husbands who impart
To each assenting spouse
The lesson that shall start
The buds upon your brows—
All whose applauding hands
Assist to rear the fame
That throws o’er all the lands
The shadow of its shame—
Go drag her car!—the mud
Through which its axle rolls
Is partly human blood
And partly human souls.
Mad, mad!—your senses whirl
Like devils dancing free,
Because a strolling girl
Can hold the note high C.
For this the avenging rod
Of Heaven ye dare defy,
And tear the law that God
Thundered from Sinai!
For Coercion of Colombia
“The ships steam south
From the harbor mouth
In warlike, grim array!
They load the seas,
And on every breeze
I hear the brass bands play
As the squadrons steer away.
“From each foreign shore
They are coming o’er
The oceans big and small,
With cheering crews
And churning screws,
And guns and shot and all.
And Admirals that appal!
“In tropical seas
They are thick as bees.
Oh, ne’er on the Trojan strand
Was gathered a fleet
So hard to beat
As sails to that southern land.
’Tis terribly, terribly grand!
“O sailorman stout,
What’s it all about?
If you happen to know tell me.
That the foe has no chance
His troops to advance
To the field we all agree,
And the devil a ship has he.”
He shifted his quid,
The sailorman did,
To the starboard side of his face.
His trousers he hitched
As he rolled and pitched,
Maintaining his dubious place
With a certain maritime grace.
He looked at the sky
With a studious eye,
And this singular yarn he spun:
“When the wind’s sou’west
Every man’s possessed
Of a devil!—no son-of-a-gun
Can tell what’s fit to be done.”
Perhaps it was naught
But a sailorman’s thought,
But I said to myself: “I’m blest
If I can’t mark down
A man of renown
