pins?”
Why, certainly, man, why not?
I rather expected you’d do so before,
When I saw you poking it in at the door.
It’s dev’lish hot—
The weather, I mean. “You are twins”?
Why, that was evident at the start,
From the way that you paint your head
In stripes of purple and red,
With dots of yellow.
That proves you a fellow
With a love of legitimate art.
“You’ve bitten a snake and are feeling bad”?
That’s very sad,
But Longfellow’s words I beg to recall:
Your lot is the common lot of all.
“Horses are trees and the moon is a sneeze”?
That, I fancy, is just as you please.
Some think that way, and others hold
The contrary view;
I never quite knew,
For the matter o’ that,
When everything has been said.
May I offer this mat
If you will stand on your head?
I suppose I look to be upside down
From your present point of view.
It’s a giddy old world, from king to clown,
And a topsy-turvy, too.
But, worthy and now uninverted old man,
You’re built, at least, on a normal plan
If ever a truth I spoke.
Smoke?
Your air and conversation
Are a liberal education,
And your clothes, including the metal hat
And the brazen boots—what’s that?
“You never could stomach a Democrat
Since General Jackson ran?
You’re another sort, but you predict
That your party’ll get consummately licked?”
Good God! what a queer old man!
Bereavement
A Countess (so they tell the tale)
Who dwelt of old in Arno’s vale,
Where ladies, even of high degree,
Know more of love than of A.B.C.,
Came once with a prodigious bribe
Unto the learned village scribe,
That most discreet and honest man
Who wrote for all the lover clan,
Nor e’er a secret had betrayed
Save when inadequately paid.
“Write me,” she sobbed—“I pray thee do—
A book about the Prince di Giu—
A book of poetry in praise
Of all his works and all his ways;
The godlike grace of his address,
His more than woman’s tenderness,
His courage stern and lack of guile,
The loves that wantoned in his smile.
So great he was, so rich and kind,
I’ll not within a fortnight find
His equal as a lover. O,
My God! I shall be drowned in woe!”
“What! Prince di Giu is dead?” exclaimed
The honest man for letters famed,
The while he pocketed her gold;
“Of what?—if I may be so bold.”
Fresh storms of tears the lady shed:
“I stabbed him fifty times,” she said.
A Pickbrain
What! imitate me, friend? Suppose that you
With agony and difficulty do
What I do easily—what then? You’ve got
A style I heartily wish I had not.
If I from lack of sense and you from choice
Grieve the judicious and the unwise rejoice,
No equal censure our deserts will suit—
We both are fools, but you’re an ape to boot!
The Naval Constructor
He looked upon the ships as they
All idly lay at anchor,
Their sides with gorgeous workmen gay—
The riveter and planker—
Republicans and Democrats,
Statesmen and politicians.
He saw the swarm of prudent rats
Swimming for land positions.
He marked each “belted cruiser” fine,
Her poddy life-belts floating
In tether where the hungry brine
Impinged upon her coating.
He noted with a proud regard,
As any of his class would,
The poplar mast and poplar yard
Above the hull of bass-wood.
He saw the Eastlake frigate tall,
With quaintly carven gable,
Hip-roof and dormer-window—all
With ivy formidable.
In short, he saw our country’s hope
In best of all conditions—
Equipped, to the last spar and rope,
By working politicians.
He boarded then the noblest ship
And from the harbor glided.
“Adieu, adieu!” fell from his lip.
Verdict: “He suicided.”
Detected
In Congress once great Mowther shone,
Debating weighty matters;
Now into an asylum thrown,
He vacuously chatters.
If in that legislative hall
His wisdom still he’d vented,
It never had been known at all
That Mowther was demented.
Bimetalism
Ben Bulger was a silver man,
Though not a mine had he:
He thought it were a noble plan
To make the coinage free.
“There hain’t for years been sech a time,”
Said Ben to his bull pup,
“For biz—the country’s broke and I’m
The hardest kind of up.
“The paper says that that’s because
The silver coins is sca’ce,
And that the chaps which makes the laws
Puts gold ones in their place.
“They says them nations always be
Most prosperatin’ where
The wolume of the currency
Ain’t so disgustin’ rare.”
His dog, which hadn’t breakfasted,
Dissented from his view,
And wished that he could swell, instead,
The volume of cold stew.
“Nobody’d put me up,” said Ben,
“With patriot galoots
Which benefits their feller men
By playin’ warious roots;
“But havin’ all the tools about,
I’m goin’ to commence
A-turnin’ silver dollars out
Wuth eighty-seven cents.
“The feller takin’ ’em can’t whine:
(No more, likewise, can I):
They’re better than the genooine,
Which mostly satisfy.
“It’s only makin’ coinage free,
And mebby might augment
The wolume of the currency
A noomerous percent”
I don’t quite see his error nor
Malevolence prepense,
But fifteen years they gave him for
That technical offense.
Two Methods
To bucks and ewes by the Good Shepherd fed
The Priest delivers masses for the dead,
And even from estrays outside the fold
Death for the masses he would not withhold.
The Parson, loth alike to free or kill,
Forsakes the souls already on the grill,
And, God’s prerogative of mercy shamming,
Spares living sinners for a harder damning.
Foundations of the State
Observe, dear Lord, what lively pranks
Are played by sentimental cranks!
First this one mounts his hinder hoofs
And brays the chimneys off the roofs;
Then that one, with exalted voice,
Expounds the thesis of his choice,
Our understandings to bombard,
Till all the window panes are starred!
A third augments the vocal shock
Till steeples to their bases rock,
Confessing, as they humbly nod,
They hear and mark the will of God.
A fourth in oral thunder vents
His pinching penury of sense
Till dogs with sympathetic howls,
And lowing cows, and cackling fowls,
Hens, geese, and all domestic birds,
Attest the terror of his words.
Cranks thus their intellects deflate
Of theories about the State.
This one avers ’tis built on Truth,
And that on Temperance. This youth
Declares that Science bears the pile;
That graybeard, with a holy smile,
Says Faith is the supporting stone;
While women swear that Love alone
Could so unflinchingly endure
The heavy load. And some are sure
The solemn state of Christian Wedlock
Is the indubitable
