Satan’s daughter with a breast of brass.
Put out your prow to sea again—but hold!
If Bryan and McKinley, all too bold,
Show up along the beach with little Teddy—
Well, Dewey, you may fire when you are ready.
A Learner
I do not think you rightly understand:
My foolish tongue imperfectly has caught
The trick of loving words, nor, as it ought,
Serves the sweet purpose of the heart’s command.
Dear, I’m untraveled in the golden land
Of love, and in its language all untaught,
Like some poor mariner by tempest brought
’Mongst alien races to a foreign strand.
So, pretty native, bear with me until
My simple wants I rightly can avow—
My will to serve you with my men and ships.
For lo! already I’ve some little skill
In the strange tongue. Ask me to kiss you now—
I’ll read the riddle ere it leaves your lips!
To Bridget
Have ye heard what the news is, me darlint?
The Fenians have threatened the Pope!
But, begorra, I think there’s a snarl in’t
That’s twisted it up like a rope.
From a kink in the telescope.
For the news, ye must know, Biddy, reaches
This counthry by means of a wire;
And sometimes the heat o’ the speeches
Just warrups it up like a fire.
Faith! who but the Divil would bother
The likes o’ the Howly Father?
And the Divil is in it, I’m fearin’,
When a gintleman’s called on to chuse
Betwixt Howly Church and Ould Erin—
The shamrock and harp to refuse,
Or be like the murtherin’ Jews.
Och! Biddy, me mind it is troublin’
To know where me body’s at home—
With half o’ me sowl there in Dublin
And t’other half over in Rome!
Bedad, there’s a shplit in the party
Of the name of O’Malley McCarty!
After Tennyson
You ask me why, though ill at ease,
Within this region I subsist,
Where honor’s dead, and law is hissed,
And all men pillage as they please.
It is the land where freemen kill
In warm debate their party foes;
The land where judges come to blows
And speak the things that make us ill;
A land of base expedient;
A land where gold can justice drown;
Where Freedom’s chains are handed down
From President to President;
Where factions wrangle for the bread
Of honest men; where, fearing naught,
Accurst monopolies have caught
The people in the nets they spread;
Where branded convicts execute
The laws that in a better time
They broke, and every kind of crime
Stalks unashamed and resolute.
Should honor e’er possess the land,
And patriots control the State,
And Justice rise, divine with hate,
To choke the politician band,
O waft me from the harbor forth.
Wild winds. I’ll see Alaska’s sky.
Here ’twill have grown too warm, and I
Will run for office in the North.
To My Bird
If I were screaming in a cage,
Parrot mine, parrot mine,
And you were rhyming on this page,
Parrot mine,
I’d try to shriek a fresher bit
Of wisdom to excite your wit,
Parrot mine.
All you have said is nothing new,
Parrot mine, parrot mine,
By Jove, I taught it all to you,
Parrot mine.
While you nor can, nor could, nor might
Have thought what I could care to write,
Parrot mine.
Your life in order to maintain,
Parrot mine, parrot mine,
You daily dine upon my brain,
Parrot mine.
My mind, a torn and mangled wreck,
Is disappearing down your neck,
Parrot mine.
Well, be it so: present your bill,
Parrot mine, parrot mine,
And on my virtues feast your fill,
Parrot mine.
My vices, though, will disagree
With you, my pet. They do with me.
Parrot mine.
Business
Two villains of the highest rank
Set out one night to rob a bank.
They found the building, looked it o’er,
Each window noted, tried each door,
Scanned carefully the lidded hole
For minstrels to cascade the coal—
In short, examined five-and-twenty
Shortcuts from poverty to plenty.
But all were sealed, they saw full soon,
Against the minions of the moon.
“Enough,” said one: “I’m satisfied.”
The other, smiling fair and wide,
Said: “I’m as highly pleased as you:
No burglar ever can get through.
Fate surely prospers our design—
The booty all is yours and mine.”
So, full of hope, the following day
To the exchange they took their way
And bought, with manner free and frank,
Some stock of that devoted bank;
And they became, inside the year,
One President and one Cashier.
Their crime I can no further trace—
The means of safety to embrace,
I overdrew and left the place.
A Possibility
If the wicked gods were willing
(Pray it never may be true!)
That a universal chilling
Should ensue
Of the sentiment of loving—
If they made a great undoing
Of the plan of turtle-doving,
Then farewell all poet-lore,
Evermore.
If there were no more of billing
There would be no more of cooing
And we all should be but owls—
Lonely fowls
Blinking wonderfully wise,
With our great round eyes—
Sitting singly in the gloaming and no longer two and two,
As unwilling to be wedded as unpracticed how to woo;
With regard to being mated,
Asking still with aggravated
Ungrammatical acerbity: “To who? To who?”
Delay responsible? Why, then; my friend,
Impeach Delay and you will make an end.
Thrust vile Delay in jail and let it rot
For doing all the things that it should not.
Put not good-natured judges under bond,
But make Delay in damages respond.
Minos, Aeacus, Rhadamanthus, rolled
Into one pitiless, unsmiling scold—
Unsparing censor, be your thongs uncurled
To “lash the rascals naked through the world.”
The rascals? Nay, Rascality’s the thing
Above whose back your knotted scourges sing.
Your satire, truly, like a razor keen,
“Wounds with a touch that’s scarcely felt or seen;”
For naught that you assail with falchion free
Has either nerves to feel or eyes to see.
Against abstractions evermore you charge:
You hack no helmet and you need no targe.
That wickedness is wrong and sin a vice,
That wrong’s not right, nor foulness ever nice,
Fearless affirm. All consequences dare:
Smite the offense and the offender spare.
When Ananias and Sapphira lied
Falsehood, had you been there, had surely died.
When money-changers in the Temple sat,
At money-changing you’d have whirled the “cat”
(That John-the-Baptist of the modern pen)
And all the brokers would have
