such dressing, such grace
Were ne’er before seen in that heavenly place!
That night, full of gin and patrician pride,
Sir Impycu blackened the eyes of his bride.
Dudley, great placeman, man of mark and note,
Worthy of honor from a feeble pen
Blunted in service of all true, good men,
You serve the Lord—in courses, table d’hôte:
Au naturel, as well as à la Nick—
“Eat and be thankful, though it make you sick.”
O, truly pious caterer, forbear
To push the Saviour and Him crucified
(Brochette you’d call it) into their inside
Who’re all unused to such ambrosial fare.
The stomach of the soul makes quick revulsion
Of aught that it has taken on compulsion.
I search the Scripture, but I do not find
That e’er the Spirit beats with angry wings
For entrance to the heart, but sits and sings
To charm away the scruples of the mind.
It says: “Receive me, please; I’ll not compel”—
Though if you don’t you will go straight to Hell!
Well, that’s compulsion, you will say. ’Tis true:
We cower timidly beneath the rod
Lifted in menace by an angry God,
But won’t endure it from an ape like you.
Detested simian with thumb prehensile,
Switch me and I would brain you with my pencil!
Face you the Throne, nor dare to turn your back
On its transplendency to flog some wight
Who gropes and stumbles in the infernal night
Your ugly shadow lays along his track.
O, Thou who from the Temple scourged the sin,
Behold what rascals try to scourge it in!
Judgment
I drew aside the Future’s veil
And saw upon his bier
The poet Whitman. Loud the wail
And damp the falling tear.
“He’s dead—he is no more!” one cried,
With sobs of sorrow crammed;
“No more? He’s this much more,” replied
Another: “he is damned!”
A Bubble
Mrs. Mehitable Marcia Moore
Was a dame of superior mind,
With a gown which, modestly fitting before,
Was greatly puffed up behind.
The bustle she wore was ingeniously planned
With an inspiration bright:
It magnified seven diameters and
Was remarkably nice and light.
It was made of rubber and edged with lace
And riveted all with brass,
And the whole immense interior space
Inflated with hydrogen gas.
The ladies all said when she hove in view
Like the round and rising moon:
“She’s a stuck up thing!” which was partly true,
And men called her the Captive Balloon.
To Manhattan Beach for a bath one day
She went and she said: “O dear!
If I leave off this what will people say?
I shall look so uncommonly queer!”
So a costume she had accordingly made
To take it all nicely in,
And when she appeared in that suit arrayed,
She was greeted with many a grin.
Proudly and happily looking around,
She waded out into the wet;
But the water was very, very profound,
And her feet and her forehead met!
As her bubble drifted away from the shore,
On the glassy billows borne,
All cried: “Why, where is Mehitable Moore?
I saw her go in, I’ll be sworn!”
Then the bulb it swelled as the sun grew hot,
Till it burst with a sullen roar,
And the sea like oil closed over the spot—
Farewell, O Mehitable Moore!
Francine
Did I believe the angels soon would call
You, my beloved, to the other shore,
And I should never see you any more,
I love you so I know that I should fall
Into dejection utterly, and all
Love’s pretty pageantry, wherein we bore
Twin banners bravely in the tumult’s fore,
Would seem as shadows idling on a wall.
So daintily I love you that my love
Endures no rumor of the winter’s breath,
And only blossoms for it thinks the sky
Forever gracious, and the stars above
Forever friendly. Even the fear of death
Were frost wherein its roses all would die.
An Example
They were two deaf mutes. They loved and they
Resolved to be groom and bride;
And they listened to nothing that any could say,
Nor ever a word replied.
From wedlock when warned by the married men,
Maintain an invincible mind:
Be deaf and dumb until wedded—and then
Be deaf and dumb and blind.
Revenge
A spitcat sate on a garden gate
And a snapdog fared beneath;
Careless and free was his mien, and he
Held a fiddle-string in his teeth.
She marked his march, she wrought an arch
Of her back and blew up her tail;
And her eyes were green as ever were seen,
And she uttered a woeful wail.
The spitcat’s plaint was as follows: “It ain’t
That I am to music a foe;
For fiddle-strings bide in my own inside,
And I twang them soft and low.
“But that dog has trifled with art and rifled
A kitten of mine, ah me!
That catgut slim was marauded from him:
’Tis the string that men call E.”
Then she sounded high, in the key of Y,
A note that cracked the tombs;
And the missiles through the firmament flew
From adjacent sleeping-rooms.
As her gruesome yell from the gate-post fell
She followed it down to earth;
And that snapdog wears a placard that bears
The inscription: “Blind from birth.”
The Genesis of Embarrassment
When Adam first saw Eve he said:
“O lovely creature, share my bed.”
Before consenting, she her gaze
Fixed on the greensward to appraise,
As well as vision could avouch,
The value of the proffered couch.
And seeing that the grass was green
And soft and scrupulously clean;
Observing that the flow’rs were rare
Varieties, and some were fair,
The posts of precious woods, and each
Bore luscious fruit in easy reach,
And all things suited well her worth,
She raised her angel eyes from earth
To his and, blushing to confess,
Murmured: “I love you, Adam—yes.”
Since then her daughters, it is said,
Look always down when asked to wed.
In Contumaciam
Och! Father McGlynn,
Ye appear to be in
Fer a bit of a bout wid the Pope;
An’ there’s devil a doubt
But he’s knockin’ ye out
While ye’re hangin’ onto the rope.
An’ soon ye’ll lave home
To thravel to Rome,
For its bound to Canossa ye
