class="i1">But there’s another year of pain behind me.
That’s something to be thankful for: the more
There are behind, the fewer are before.
I know you, Father Christmas, for a scamp,
But Heaven endowed me at my soul’s creation
With an affinity to every tramp
That walks the world and steals its admiration.
For admiration is, like linen left
Upon the line—got easiest by theft.
Good God! old man, just think of it! I’ve stood,
With brains and honesty, some five-and-twenty
Long years as champion of all that’s good,
And taken on the mazzard thwacks a-plenty.
Yet now whose praises do the people bawl?
Those of the fellows whom I live to maul.
Why, this is odd!—the more I try to talk
Of you, the more my tongue grows egotistic
To prattle of myself! I’ll try to balk
Its waywardness and be more altruistic.
So let us speak of others—how they sin,
And what a devil of a state they’re in!
That’s all I have to say. Good-bye, old man.
Next year you possibly may find me scolding—
Or miss me altogether: Nature’s plan
Includes, as I suppose, a final folding
Of these poor empty hands. Then drop a tear
To think they’ll never box another ear.
My Day of Life
I know not how it is—it seems
Fantastic and surprising
That after all these dreams and dreams,
Here in the sun’s first level beams,
The sun is still just rising!
When first he showed his sovereign face,
And bade the night-folk scuttle
Back to their holes, I took my place
Here on the hill, and God His grace
Sent slumber soft and subtle.
Among the poppies red and white,
I’ve lain and drowsed, for all it
Appears a sluggardly delight.
I must have had a wakeful night,
Though, faith, I don’t recall it.
And, O I’ve dreamed so many things!
One hardly can unravel
The tangled web of visionings
That slumber-of-the-morning brings:
Play, study, work and travel;
The love of women (mostly those
Were fairest that were newest);
Hard knocks from friends and other foes:
Compacts with men (my memory shows
The deadest are the truest);
War—what a hero I became
By merely dreaming battle!
Athwart the field of letters, Fame
Blared through the brass my weary name
With an ominous death-rattle.
Such an eternity of thought
Within a minute’s fraction!
Such phantoms out of nothing wrought,
And fading suddenly to naught
As I awake to action!
They scamper each into its hole,
These dreams of my begetting.
They’ve had their moment; take, my soul,
Thy day of life. … Gods! this is droll—
That thieving sun is setting!
The Scrap Heap
Poesy
Successive bards pursue Ambition’s fire
That shines, Oblivion, above thy mire.
The latest mounts his predecessor’s trunk,
And sinks his brother ere himself is sunk.
So die ingloriously Fame’s elite,
But dams of dunces keep the line complete.
Hospitality
Why ask me, Gastrogogue, to dine,
(Unless to praise your rascal wine)
Yet never ask some luckless sinner
Who needs, as I do not, a dinner?
Magnanimity
“To the will of the people we loyally bow!”
That’s the minority shibboleth now.
O noble antagonists, answer me flat—
What would you do if you didn’t do that?
Understated
“I’m sorry I married,” says Upton Sinclair:
“The conjugal status is awful!—
The devil’s device, a delusion and snare.”
Worse, far worse than that—it is lawful!
An Attorney-General
Philander Knox!—I know him by the sound;
His sleep, unlike his learning, is profound.
No dreams of duty mar his loud repose,
Nor strain the cobwebs tethering his nose,
Which, roaring ever like the solemn sea.
Proclaims to all the world that this is he.
In thought a tortoise but in act a hare,
Slow to decide and impotent to dare,
Yet no important crisis he ignores,
But sleeps upon it, and for action—snores.
Financial News
Says Rockefeller: “Money is not tight,”
And, faith, I’m thinking that the man is right.
If it were not, at least in morals, loose
He hardly could command it for his use.
Lo! the wild rabbit, happy in the pride
Of qualities to meaner beasts denied,
Surveys the ass with reverence and fear,
Adoring his superior length of ear,
And says: “No living creature, lean or fat,
But wishes in his heart to be like That!”
Democracy
Let slaves and subjects with extolling psalms
Before their sovereign execute salaams;
The freeman scorns one idol to adore—
Tom, Dick, and Harry and himself are four.
An Enemy to Law and Order
A is defrauded of his land by B,
Who’s driven from the premises by C.
D buys the place with coin of plundered E.
“That A’s an Anarchist!” says F to G.
Foresight
An “actors’ cemetery”! Sure
The devil never tires
Of planning places to procure
The sticks to feed his fires.
A Fair Division
Another Irish landlord gone to grass,
Slain by the bullets of the tenant class!
Pray, good agrarians, what wrong requires
Such foul redress? Between you and the squires
All Ireland’s parted with an even hand—
For you have all the ire, they all the land.
A Lacking Factor
“You acted unwisely,” I cried, “as you see
By the outcome.” He calmly eyed me:
“When choosing the course of my action,” said he,
“I had not the outcome to guide me.”
The Politician
“Let patriots manipulate
The tiller of the Ship of State;
Be mine the humble, useful toil
To work the tiller of the soil.”
Elihu Root
Stoop to a dirty trick or low misdeed?
What, bend him from his moral skies to it?
No, no, not he! To serve his nature’s need
He may upon occasion rise to it.
An Error
“I never have been able to determine
Just how it is that the judicial ermine
Is safely guarded from predacious vermin.”
“It is not so, my friend: though in a garret
’Tis kept in camphor, and you often air it,
The vermin will get into it and wear it.”
Vanished at Cock-Crow
“I’ve found the secret of your charm,” I said,
Expounding with complacency my guess.
Alas! the charm, even as I named it, fled,
For all its secret was unconsciousness.
Woman
Study good women and ignore the rest,
For he best knows the sex who knows the best.
A Partisan’s Protest
O statesmen,
