someone thundered in my ear: “You shan’t
Be interrupting these proceedings, sir;
The question was addressed to General Grant.”
Some other things were spoken which I can’t
Distinctly now recall, but I infer,
By certain flushings of my cheeks and forehead,
Posterity’s environment is torrid.
Then heard I (this was in a dream, remark)
Another Voice, clear, comfortable, strong,
As Grant’s great shade, replying from the dark,
Said in a tone that rang the earth along,
And thrilled the senses of the judges’ throng:
“I’d rather you would question why, in park
And street, my monuments were not erected
Than why they were.” Then, waking, I reflected.
Constancy
I had a dream. A throng of people sped
Hard after something that before them fled—
A ball that leapt and bounded. I pursued,
Kicking, like all the rest, at Bryan’s head.
Ah, God, it was indeed a ghastly play!
That noble head—its locks in disarray
Streaming like feathers of a shuttlecock—
Urged with resounding buffets on its way.
Ever the foremost in the chase accurst
Ran Two who in his life, too, had been first
Among his followers. “Behold,” I cried,
“Those twins of constancy, the Devil and Hearst!”
Smitten in spirit with a sudden shame.
And from intemperate exertion lame,
I sprang, and skyward with a parting kick
Hoisted that mellow bulb, and left the game.
The New Enoch Arden
Enoch Arden was an able
Seaman; hear of his mishap—
Not in wild mendacious fable,
As ’twas told by t’other chap;
For I hold it is a youthful
Indiscretion to tell lies,
And the writer that is truthful
Has the reader that is wise.
Enoch Arden, able seaman,
On an isle was cast away,
And before he was a free man
Time had touched him up with gray.
Long he searched the fair horizon,
Seated on a mountain top;
Vessel ne’er he set his eyes on
That would undertake to stop.
Seeing that his sight was growing
Dim and dimmer day by day,
Enoch said he must be going.
So he rose and went away—
Went away and so continued
Till he lost his lonely isle:
Mr. Arden was so sinewed
He could row for many a mile.
Compass he had not, nor sextant,
To direct him o’er the sea:
Ere ’twas known that he was extant,
At his boyhood’s home was he.
When he saw the hills and hollows
And the streets he could but know,
He gave utterance as follows
To the sentiments below:
“Blast my tarry toplights! (shiver,
Too, my timbers!) but, I say,
W’at a larruk to diskiver,
That I’ve lost my blessed way!
“W’at, alas, would be my bloomin’
Fate if Philip now I see,
Which I lammed?—or my old ’oman,
Which has frequent basted me?”
All the landscape swam around him
At the thought of such a lot:
In a swoon his Annie found him
And conveyed him to her cot.
’Twas the very house, the garden,
Where their honeymoon was passed:
’Twas the place where Mrs. Arden
Would have mourned him to the last.
Ah, what grief she’d known without him!
Now what tears of joy she shed!
Enoch Arden looked about him:
“Shanghaied!”—that was all he said.
Disavowal
Two bodies are lying in Phoenix Park,
Grim and bloody and stiff and stark,
And a Land League man with averted eye
Crosses himself as he hurries by.
And he says to his conscience under his breath:
“I have had no hand in this deed of death.”
A Fenian, making a circuit wide
And passing them by on the other side,
Shudders and crosses himself and cries:
“Who says that I did it, he lies, he lies!”
Gingerly stepping across the gore,
Pat Satan comes after the two before,
Makes, in a solemnly comical way,
The sign of the cross and is heard to say:
“O dear, what a terrible sight to see,
For babes like them and a saint like me!”
An Average
I ne’er could be entirely fond
Of any maiden who’s a blonde,
And no brunette that e’er I saw
My whole devotion e’er could draw.
Yet sure no girl was ever made
Just half of light and half of shade.
And so, this happy mean to get,
I love a blonde and a brunette.
Incurable
From pride, joy, hate, greed, melancholy—
From any kind of vice, or folly,
Bias, propensity or passion
That is in prevalence and fashion,
Save one, the sufferer or lover
May, by the grace of God, recover.
Alone that spiritual tetter,
The zeal to make creation better,
Glows still immedicably warmer.
Who knows of a reformed reformer?
The Pun
Hail, peerless Pun! thou last and best,
Most rare and excellent bequest
Of dying idiot to the wit
He died of, rat-like, in a pit!
Thyself disguised, in many a way
Thou let’st thy sudden splendor play,
Adorning all where’er it turns,
As the revealing bull’s-eye burns
Of the dim thief, and plays its trick
Upon the lock he means to pick.
Yet sometimes, too, thou dost appear
As boldly as a brigadier
Tricked out with marks and signs, all o’er
Of rank, brigade, division, corps,
To show by every means he can
An officer is not a man;
Or naked, with a lordly swagger,
Proud as a cur without a wagger,
Who says: “See simple worth prevail—
All dog, sir—not a bit of tail!”
’Tis then men give thee loudest welcome,
As if thou wert a soul from Hell come.
O obvious Pun! thou hast the grace
Of skeleton clock without a case—
With all its boweling displayed,
And all its organs on parade.
Dear Pun, thou’rt common ground of bliss,
Where Punch and I can meet and kiss;
Than thee my wit can stoop no lower—
No higher his does ever soar.
To Nanine
Dear, if I never saw your face again;
If all the music of your voice were mute
As that of a forlorn and broken lute;
If only in my dreams I might attain
The benediction of your touch, how vain
Were Faith to justify the old pursuit
Of happiness, or Reason to confute
The pessimist philosophy of pain.
Yet Love not altogether is unwise,
For still the wind would murmur in the corn,
And still the sun would splendor all the mere;
And I—I could not, dearest, choose but hear
Your voice upon the breeze and see your eyes
Shine in the glory of the summer morn.
Vice Versa
Down in the state of Maine, the story goes,
A woman, to secure a lapsing pension,
Married a soldier—though the good Lord
