id="an-exhibit" epub:type="z3998:poem">
An “Exhibit”
Goldenson hanged! Well, Heaven forbid
That I should smile above him:
Though truth to tell, I never did
Exactly love him.
It can’t be wrong, though, to rejoice
That his unpleasing capers
Are ended. Silent is his voice
In all the papers.
No longer he’s a show: no more,
Bear-like, his den he’s walking.
No longer can he hold the floor
When I’d be talking.
The laws that govern jails are bad
If such displays are lawful.
The fate of the assassin’s sad,
But ours is awful!
What! shall a wretch condemned to die
In shame upon the gibbet
Be set before the public eye
As an “exhibit”?—
His looks, his actions noted down,
His words, if light or solemn,
And all this hawked about the town—
So much a column?
The press, of course, will publish news
However it may get it;
But blast the sheriff who’ll abuse
His powers to let it!
Nay, this is not ingratitude;
I’m no reporter, truly,
Nor yet an editor. I’m rude—
Perhaps unruly—
Because I burn with shame and rage
Beyond my power of telling
To see assassins in a cage
And keepers yelling.
“Walk up! Walk up!” the showman cries:
“Observe the lion’s poses,
His stormy mane, his glooming eyes.
His—hold your noses!”
How long, O Lord, shall Law and Right
Be mocked for gain or glory,
And angels weep as they recite
The shameful story?
The Transmigrations of a Soul
What! Pixley, must I hear you call the roll
Of all the vices that infest your soul?
Was’t not enough that lately you did bawl
Your money-worship in the ears of all?
Still must you crack your brazen cheek to tell
That though a miser you’re a sot as well?
Still must I hear how low your taste has sunk—
From getting money down to getting drunk?
Who worships money, damning all beside,
And shows his callous knees with pious pride,
Speaks with half-knowledge, for no man e’er scorns
His own possessions, be they coins or corns.
You’ve money, neighbor; had you gentle birth
You’d know, as now you never can, its worth.
You’ve money; learning is beyond your scope,
Deaf to your envy, stubborn to your hope.
But if upon your undeserving head
Science and letters had their glory shed;
If in the cavern of your skull the light
Of knowledge shone where now eternal night
Breeds the blind, poddy, vapor-fatted naughts
Of cerebration that you think are thoughts—
Black bats in cold and dismal corners hung
That squeak and gibber when you move your tongue—
You would not write, in Avarice’s defense,
A senseless eulogy on lack of sense,
Nor show your eagerness to sacrifice
All noble virtues to one loathsome vice.
You’ve money; if you’d manners too you’d shame
To boast your weakness or your baseness name.
Appraise the things you have, but measure not
The things denied to your unhappy lot.
He values manners lighter than a cork
Who combs his beard at table with a fork.
Hare to seek sin and tortoise to forsake,
The laws of taste condemn you to the stake
To expiate, where all the world may see,
The crime of growing old disgracefully.
Distinction, learning, birth and manners, too,
All that distinguishes a man from you,
Pray damn at will: all shining virtues gain
An added luster from a rogue’s disdain.
But spare the young that proselyting sin,
A toper’s apotheosis of gin.
If not our young, at least our pigs may claim
Exemption from the spectacle of shame!
Are you not he who lately out of shape
Blew a brass trumpet to denounce the grape?—
Who led the brave teetotalers afield
And slew your leader underneath your shield?—
Swore that no man should drink unless he flung
Himself across your body at the bung?
Who vowed if you’d the power you would fine
The Son of God for making water wine?
All trails to odium you tread and boast,
Yourself enamored of the dirtiest most.
One day to be a miser you aspire,
The next to wallow drunken in the mire;
The third, lo! you’re a meritorious liar!
Pray, in the catalogue of all your graces
Have theft and cowardice no honored places?
Yield thee, great Satan—here’s a rival name
With all thy vices and but half thy shame!
Quick to the letter of the precept, quick
To the example of the elder Nick;
With as great talent as was e’er applied
To fool a teacher and to fog a guide;
With slack allegiance and boundless greed,
To paunch the profit of a traitor deed,
He aims to make thy glory all his own,
And crowd his master from the infernal throne!
Indictment on Evidence
Bruce Douglas, nephew to a Scottish Earl,
Sat in the City Prison, low in heart
And spirits. Round him lay the forms of men—
Men of the people, of ignoble birth—
Prone or supine in sleep; but sleep and he
Were out: the Douglas was too drunk for sleep.
And so he sat and moaned; and still his moan
Had all the cadences and stops of song—
Recurrent swells and measured silences
Which sought the ear as ocean’s billows roll,
At even spaces and with matching speed,
One after one ashore. Wherefore uprose
An old gray constable who in the morn
And blossom of his life had courted fame
As horse-reporter for a public print,
And so was skilled in letters, and he spake,
There to the sergeant, saying: “Surely, now,
The man’s a poet. In his moan I hear
The pulsing and the passion of the sea—
Hear the far beating of the waterfall,
Throbbing of noon-day insects in the grass—
All rhythmic movements of the universe
Which poets echo in their thought and speech,
Even in their inarticulate complaints
Of pain. My life I’ll hazard that the man’s
A bard disguised to look a gentleman.”
So, bringing his effects, which had till then
Lain unconsidered—from his pockets plucked
And tossed aside—all curiously they
Explored the papers. Odes and odes there were,
And every ode in praise of some fair scene
In a fair land; and the fair land was this
Our California. From the snowy peaks
That glitter in the skies of Siskiyou,
Down to the golden margin where the land
Slips underneath the San Diegan bay;
And from the dim Sierra, far across
To where old Ocean bears upon his breast
The Mongol horde returning to its own,
Its native land and its dear household gods,
Bruce Douglas, nephew of a Scottish Earl,
Had sung the beauty of the Golden State!
So then the Clerk, splitting the Book of Doom,
Charged him therein with murder, arson, rape,
Theft, libel, mayhem and intent to leave
The State and so defraud his creditors—
With vagrancy, extortion
