soup,
And all the brethren mendicate the earth
With viewless placards: “We’ve been so from birth!”
Sure of his wage, the pastor now can lend
His whole attention to his latter end,
Remarking with a martyr’s prescient thrill
The Hemp maturing on the cheerless Hill.
The holy brethren, lifting pious palms,
Pour out their gratitude in prayer and psalms,
Chant De Profundis, meaning “out of debt,”
And dance like mad—or would if they were let.
Deeply disguised (a deacon newly dead
Supplied the means) Jack Satan holds his head
As high as any and as loudly sings
His jubilate till each rafter rings.
“Rejoice, ye ever faithful,” bellows he,
“The debt is lifted and the temple free!”
Then says, aside, with gentle cachinnation:
“I have a mortgage on the congregation.”
Thus the poor ass whose appetite has ne’er
Known than the thistle any sweeter fare
Thinks all the world eats thistles. Thus the clown,
The wit and Mentor of the country town,
Grins through the collar of a horse and thinks
Others for pleasure do as he for drinks,
Though secretly, because unwilling still
In public to attest their lack of skill.
Each dunce whose life and mind all follies mar
Believes as he is all men living are—
His vices theirs, their understandings his;
Naught that he knows not, all he fancies, is,
How odd that any mind such stuff should boast!
How natural to write it in the Post!
Hell
The friends who stood about my bed
Looked down upon my face and said:
“God’s will be done—the fellow’s dead.”
When from my body I was free
I straightway felt myself, ah me!
Sink downward to the life to be.
Full twenty centuries I fell,
And then alighted. “Here you dwell
For aye,” a Voice cried—“this is Hell!”
A landscape lay about my feet,
Where trees were green and flowers sweet.
The climate was devoid of heat.
The sun looked down with gentle beam
Upon the bosom of the stream,
Nor saw I any sign of steam.
The waters by the sky were tinged,
The hills with light and color fringed.
Birds warbled on the wing unsinged.
“Ah, no, this is not Hell,” I cried;
“The preachers ne’er so greatly lied,
This is Earth’s spirit glorified!
“Good souls do not in Hades dwell,
And, look, there’s John P. Irish!” “Well,”
The Voice said, “that’s what makes it Hell.”
By False Pretenses
John S. Hittell, whose sovereign genius wields
The quill his tributary body yields;
The author of an opera—that is,
All but the music and libretto’s his:
A work renowned, whose formidable name,
Linked with his own, repels the assault of fame
From the high vantage of a dusty shelf,
Secure from all the world except himself;—
Who told the tale of “Culture” in a screed
That all might understand if all would read;—
Master of poesy and lord of prose,
Dowered, like a setter, with a double nose;
That one for Erato, for Clio this;
He flushes both—not his fault if we miss;—
Judge of the painter’s art, who’ll straight proclaim
The hue of any color you can name,
And knows a painting with a canvas back
Distinguished from a duck by the duck’s quack;—
This thinker and philosopher, whose work
Is famous from Commercial street to Turk,
Has now a fortune, of his pen the meed.
A woman left it him who could not read,
And so went down to death’s eternal night
Sweetly unconscious that the wretch could write.
Lucifer of the Torch
O Reverend Ravlin, once with sounding lung
You shook the bloody banner of your tongue,
Urged all the fiery boycotters afield
And swore you’d rather see them die than yield.
Alas, how brief the time, how great the change!—
Your dogs of war are ailing all of mange;
The loose leash dangles from your finger-tips,
But the loud “havoc” dies upon your lips.
No spirit animates your feeble clay—
You’d rather yield than even run away.
In vain McGlashan labors to inspire
Your pallid nostril with his breath of fire:
The light of battle’s faded from your face—
You keep the peace, John Chinaman his place.
O Ravlin, what cold water, thrown by whom,
Upon the kindling Boycott’s ruddy bloom,
Has slaked your parching blood-thirst and allayed
The flash and shimmer of your lingual blade?
Your salary—your salary’s unpaid!
In the old days, when Christ with scourges drave
The Ravlins headlong from the Temple’s nave,
Each bore upon his pelt the mark divine—
The Boycott’s red authenticating sign.
Birth-marked forever in surviving hurts,
Glowing and smarting underneath their shirts,
Successive Ravlins have revenged their shame
By blowing every coal and flinging flame.
And you, the latest (may you be the last!)
Endorsed with that hereditary, vast
And monstrous rubric, would the feud prolong,
Save that cupidity forbids the wrong.
In strife you preferably pass your days—
But brawl no moment longer than it pays.
By shouting when no more you can incite
The dogs to put the timid sheep to flight
To load, for you, the brambles with their fleece,
You cackle concord to congenial geese,
Put pinches of goodwill upon their tails
And pluck them with a touch that never fails.
“The Whirligig of Time”
Dr. Jewell speaks of Balaam
And his vices, to assail ’em.
Ancient enmities how cruel!—
Balaam cudgeled once a Jewell.
A Railroad Lackey
Ben Truman, you’re a genius and can write,
Though one would not suspect it from your looks.
You lack that certain spareness which is quite
Distinctive of the persons who make books.
You show the workmanship of Stanford’s cooks
About the region of the appetite,
Where geniuses are singularly slight.
Your friends the Chinamen are understood,
Indeed, to speak of you as “belly good.”
Still, you can write—spell, too, I understand—
Though how two such accomplishments can go,
Like sentimental schoolgirls, hand in hand
Is more than ever I can hope to know.
To have one talent good enough to show
Has always been sufficient to command
The veneration of the brilliant band
Of railroad scholars, who themselves, indeed,
Although they cannot write, can mostly read.
There’s Towne, with Fillmore, Goodman and Steve Gage
Ned Curtis of Napoleonic face,
Who used to dash his name on glory’s page,
“A. M.” appended to denote his place
Among the learned. Now the last faint trace
Of Nap, is all obliterate with age,
And Ned’s degree less precious than his wage.
He says: “I done it,” with his every breath.
“Thou canst not say I did it,” says Macbeth.
Good land! how I run on! I quite forgot
Whom this
