scarce will serve
To cover up the stripes (where are the stars?)
Which to a fertile fancy seem to curve
Round you like shadows of the prison bars.
Embezzlement, I’m told, exists in Mars,
Where sometimes an official will “convey”
And in “the shadow of the jail” abide
Till it seems photographed upon his hide
And shapes his gait, as if he dragged alway
A ball-and-chain. Upon the Moon’s far side
Dwells such a man, who knows not (goes the story)
Which of the saints he is when out for glory.
A Prediction
When the skies are green with clover,
And the cows are flying over;
When the roses lose their fragrance;
When the ants are shiftless vagrants;
When the peacocks pluck their tails,
And the lion pares his nails;
When old ocean’s roaring ridges
Roll beneath iridium bridges;
When diseases and physicians
Quarrel; when the politicians
Go to work; when lawyers never
Fib no more again forever;
When we gather ice to burn,
And to eggs potatoes turn;
When the pie-distended sleeper
On the nightmare keeps his peeper.
Quick to round her up and mount her,
Field and Terry will “encounter.”
When the whales, in battle order,
March across our northern border;
When the serpent of the sea
Is no longer known to be;
When the cats intone in Latin,
And the lady ape wears satin;
When the vulture, Mortgage, perches
Nevermore upon the churches;
When the sycophant despises
Arts by which the bird-louse rises
Comfortably to the sky,
And the smithy-haunting fly,
Sitting on the swelling bellows,
Is no prouder than his fellows;
When the mocking-bird eschews
All of his assenting views.
Nor proclaims them out of season;
When the poets learn to reason;
When lieutenants damn the bullets
Penetrating captains’ gullets,
And a major feels the pain
Of his colonel’s shattered brain;
When the best of human creatures
Is the most austere of preachers,
And the woman who’s demurest
Is the truest and the purest;
When the Mississippi, yearning
For its native hills and turning
Deftly backward in its bed,
Lays its mouth against its head;
When the turtle-doves are cruel—
Field and Terry’ll fight a duel.
Another Plan
Editor Owen, of San Jose,
Commonly known as “our friend J. J.,”
Weary of scribbling for daily bread,
Weary of writing what nobody read,
Slept one day at his desk and dreamed
That an angel before him stood and beamed
With compassionate eyes upon him there.
Editor Owen is not so fair
In feature, expression, form or limb
But glances like that are familiar to him;
And so, to arrive by the shortest route
At his visitor’s will he said simply: “Toot.”
“Editor Owen,” the angel said,
“Scribble no more for your daily bread.
Your intellect staggers and falls and bleeds,
Weary of writing what nobody reads.
Eschew now the quill—in the coming years
Homilize man through his idle ears.
Go lecture!” “Just what I intended to do,”
Said Owen. The angel looked pained and flew.
Editor Owen, of San Jose,
Commonly known as “our friend J. J.,”
Scribbling no more to supply his needs,
Weary of writing what nobody reads.
Passes of life each golden year
Speaking what nobody comes to hear.
A Political Apostate
Good friend, it is with deep regret I note
The latest, strangest turning of your coat;
Though any way you wear that mental clout
The seamy side seems always to be out.
Who could have thought that you would e’er sustain
The Southern shotgun’s arbitrary reign?—
Your sturdy hand assisting to replace
The broken yoke on a delivered race;
The ballot’s purity no more your care,
With equal privilege to dark and fair.
To Yesterday a traitor, to To-day
You’re constant but the better to betray
To-morrow. Your convictions all are naught
But the wild asses of the world of thought,
Which, flying mindless o’er the barren plain,
Perceive at last they’ve nothing so to gain,
And, turning penitent upon their track,
Economize their strength by flying back.
Ex-champion of Freedom, battle-lunged,
No more, red-handed, or at least red-tongued,
Brandish the javelin which by others thrown
Clove Sambo’s heart to quiver in your own!
Confess no more that when his blood was shed,
And you so sympathetically bled,
The bow that spanned the mutual cascade
Was but the promise of a roaring trade
In offices. Your fingering now the trigger
Shows that you knew your Negro was a nigger!
Ad hominem this argumentum runs:
Peace!—let us fire another kind of guns.
I grant you, friend, that it is very true
The Blacks are ignorant—and sable, too.
What then? One way of two a fool must vote,
And either way with gentlemen of note
Whose villain feuds the fact attest too well
That pedagogues nor vice nor error quell.
The fiercest controversies ever rage
When Miltons and Salmasii engage.
No project wide attention ever drew
But it disparted all the learned crew.
As through their group the cleaving line’s prolonged
With fiery combatants each field is thronged;
In battle-royal they engage at once
For guidance of the hesitating dunce.
The Titans on the heights contend full soon—
On this side Webster and on that Calhoun,
The monstrous conflagration of their fight
Startling the day and splendoring the night!
Both are unconquerable—one is right.
Will’t keep the pigmy, if we make him strong,
From siding with a giant in the wrong?
When Genius strikes for error, who’s afraid
To arm poor Folly with a wooden blade?
O Rabelais, you knew it all!—your good
And honest judge (by men misunderstood)
Knew to be right there was but one device
Less fallible than intellect—the dice.
The time must come—Heaven expedite the day!—
When all mankind shall their decrees obey,
And nations prosper in their peaceful sway.
Tinker Dick
Good Parson Dickson preached, I’m told,
A sermon—ah, ’twas very old
And very, very, bald!
’Twas all about—I know not what
It was about, nor what ’twas not.
“A Screw Loose” it was called.
Whatever, Parson Dick, you say,
The world will get each blessed day
Still more and more askew,
And fall apart at last. Great snakes!
What skillful tinker ever takes
His tongue to turn a screw?
