class="i1">Who is living in mental unrest
Where the wind is forever sou’west.”
A Teagoing Admiral
Once the Queen of Nether China
(So benign a Messalina!)
Said: “I’ll make a Naval Hero
Without fear—O brave as Nero!
He shall dominate the ocean
By promotion, that’s my notion.
All my other sons of thunder
Then shall plunder vainly under
This Incomparable Person,
Interspersin’ lively cursin’
With their futile strife to shiver
Every river-pirate’s liver,
And to ascertain the measure
Of his treasure at their leisure.
For I’ll so arrange the looting
And the shooting and the hooting,
And the making frightful faces
(These grimaces are the bases
Of our tactics) that they never,
Howsoever brave and clever,
Shall have any kind of inning
In the skinning now beginning.
And I’ll see that in the story
Of the gory game of glory
The historian shall slight ’em
Or indict ’em—maybe bite ’em.
But the Hero of my making,
Whom I’m aching to be waking
Into visible existence,
He shall distance these Philistines.
Fame’s loud trumpet—he shall hear it.
Blown with spirit in his ear, it
Shall extol his birth and breeding,
His exceeding knack at leading
In a sanguinary sea fight,
Or a tea fight, or a flea fight,
Till he burst with admiration
Of his station in the nation!
Then while all the people mock him,
I’ll unfrock him! That will shock him.”
Thus the Queen of Nether China,
The Regina Mun-Kee-Shina,
Made to Naval Evolution
A Confucian contribution.
The Wooer
In Ballybazoo the young men woo
With the irresistible hob-nail shoe;
But in Ghargharoo lived a maiden who
Was pleased to remark that it wouldn’t do.
From Ghargharoo to Ballybazoo
This sternly dissenting maiden (who,
Etc.) went to reside—a lass
With a cheek of steel and a brow of brass.
Then all the young men of Ballybazoo
Took turns in calling early to woo
(With the irresistible hob-nail shoe)
The beautiful maiden from Ghargharoo.
As each fond lover with ardor threw
His heel in her upturned face there flew
A rain of sparks that consumed his eyes,
Affecting his mind with a great surprise.
When all the young men had renounced their sight,
The metal-faced maiden she sat upright,
Remarking: “There’s nothing here to do—
A dull, dull village is Ballybazoo.”
From Ballybazoo to Ghargharoo
The cheek-whole maiden her armament drew,
And her playmate lovers raised a hurroo
That saddened the sightless in Ballybazoo.
A stranger there was who cherished a heel
Of double-case-hardened, cold-rolled chrome steel!
And taking thought he decided to woo.
As ’twas his undoubted right to do.
To display his charms he removed his shoe,
And boarding her visage, began to woo.
And there in the gloaming, and not in vain,
The old, old story was told again.
It was long ago in the sainted past,
But traits long latent crop out at last;
And I know a live newspaper fellow who
Has ancestors buried in Ghargharoo.
Silhouettes of Orientals
The Sultan is a Muscleman;
He’s full of vim and whack,
And if you want a tussle man
His back.
Because he’s a Mahometan,
They think him mighty slow.
He’s quicker than a comet—an
Auto!
He doesn’t often waste a fit,
But throws it where ’twill tell.
Blood? Yes, he likes the taste of it
Right well.
That angel, the Bulgarian,
Is just a bird of pray.
His soul’s as white as Parian,
They say.
His halo fits him pleasantly
And he has two great wings.
He tunes his harp, and presently
He sings:
“My shoulder inoffensively
Bears this dear little chip.
Pass on, wayfarer, pensively—
Don’t flip.”
The thoughtful Moslem pins the chip
Fast with a dagger. Oh,
That angel-person’s sins of lip
Are low!
The Armenian is a sassy cur,
Cantankerous to boot,
Nor draws the line at massacre
And loot.
But when the Kurd in revelry
Slays, burns, imprisons, fines,
That bad gent to the devil he
Consigns.
My muse cannot exemplify
The Macedonian—she
Refuses to attempt to fly
So free.
Old Philip, King of Macedon,
Is many ages dead;
We have this little gassy don
Instead.
Is he a Unitarian,
A Moslem, Buddhist, Jew—
Or just a gowned barbarian
With trousers on his Mary Ann?
Don’t know—do you?
Land of the Pilgrim’s Pride
I dreamed, and in my dream came one who said:
“Because thou art all sullen; and because
Thou sayest thou hast not for thy country, love;
Because thou dost begrudge the foolish blood
That in the far heroic days thou didst
(Or sayst thou didst) pour from thy riven vein
In testimony to thy patriot zeal;
Because thou seekest ever to promote
Distrust of the benign and wholesome rule
Of the Majority—God’s Ministers;
Because thou hearest in the People’s voice
Naught but the mandate of an idiot will
Clamoring in the wilderness, but what
Or why it knoweth not; because all this
And much beside is true, I come—”
“Forbear,” I cried, “to name thine errand—all
Too well I know it for the sword, the scales,
The shrouded eyes (albeit methinks I catch
A twinkle now and then beneath the band)
Speak to my conscience of a traitor’s doom!
Strike, then, but hear. To westward, roaring up
From far beyond the earth’s vast curvature,
Come sounds of discord horrible—the jar
And thunder of exploding bombs;
The crackle of the flames that eat away
The means of life of those who kindle them;
The shouts and curses of the robber mob.
Drunk with a sense of numbers—like the wolves,
Numerically brave—on ravin bent
And murder! Hear the moans of honest men,
With shameful by-name vilified, denied
The right to earn their bread, and with a blind,
Mad cruelty the devil would weep to see,
Beaten and tortured, even by the hands
Of the barbarian’s female and his whelps!
Meanwhile the coward rulers of the land
Prate of ‘the People’s wrongs.’ The coward press
(Thrifty withal to purse a double gain
By two-faced flattery) prates like a fool
Of the conservative and saving strength
Of Anglo-Saxon institutions, or
With magic words, as ‘freedom,’ and the like,
Would conjure order from inharmony.
The land is foul with crime, and none declares
Our shame and downfall. Even the women rise
And seeing the rack and ruin men have wrought,
Strip their weak bodies with a silly zeal
Something to save from the chaotic wreck;
And in the reek and sweat of their absurd
And awkward efforts, lose even what remained—
Their own morality and men’s respect.
Therefore I say to you—”
“Nay say no more,”
Cried she who came into my dream, “for thou
Dost wander. What, pray, has all this to do
With what thou’rt charged with?—that thou dost not love—
Such as it is—thy country?”
“Faith, I would,
But ’tis infested by my countrymen!”
What she replied I know not, for a bomb,
Spitting and sputtering on my chamber floor.
Awoke me and I fled into the night.
