Poetry

barren paddock is a Field Elysian,
Compared with many an historic place,
Where royal odors leg it into space.)

The dead intimidate no Sandlot Judge,
Nor was it ever their besetting sin to
Scare burly Sheriffs. Faith! I’d not begrudge
That cross the necks if it were fashioned into
A double gibbet, on one arm to bear
A rioter, on t’other one a Mayor.

Long live the dead! Since they prefer to live
Within the law, it is a monstrous pity
That early legislation did not give
Them the authority to rule this city.
Here’s to their health! and may their tribe increase⁠—
Recruited from the Judges and Police.

With a Book

Words shouting, singing, smiling, frowning⁠—
Sense lacking.

Ah, nothing, more obscure than Browning,
Save blacking.

A Competitor

Mrs. Frona Eunice Wait,
My legs are not so very straight;
My spine, I’m sorry to observe,
Maintains a most rebellious curve;
My neck is skinny, and my bust
Would justify a husband’s trust.
But papa thinks his Mary Ann
Is built upon a gorgeous plan.

Mrs. Frona Eunice Wait,
I take the liberty to state
That Venuses would go on strike
If ordered to be all alike;
For some are made for this, and some
For that⁠—you take ’em as they come.
But papa says: “My Mary Ann
Knocks out the whole damn caravan!”

Mrs. Frona Eunice Wait,
They think in Greaserville I’m great⁠—
They say in Greaserville: “You bet
She’ll make them hens get up and get!
She’s just a bird!” So when I clout
Myself in cheese-cloth you look out!
For papa says: “My Mary Ann
Has win whenever she has ran.”

Mrs. Frona Eunice Wait,
I’m giving you the business straight:
Make any standards that you please
Beneath my cloth I’m just the cheese.
I care not what the artists say⁠—
I’m in it and I’m in to stay.
For papa says: “If Mary Ann
Will advertise she’ll get a man.”

Mrs. Frona Eunice Wait,
Head Venus-herder of the State,
Round up your girls. But Frona, dear
I think it very, very queer
That you yourself do not compete.
Are you too plump or too petite?
My papa says: “Why, Mary Ann,
She’s from Beërsheba to Dan!”

Generosity

By seven brave poems the Mikado shows
His royal fitness for the field of prose.
Of bold, bad bards to crown him brother-chief
Dick Watson Gilder spares one laurel leaf.

Bats in Sunshine

Well, Mr. Kemble, you are called, I think,
A great divine, and I’m a great profane.
You as a Congregationalist blink
Some certain truths that I esteem a gain,
And drop them in the coffers of my brain,
Pleased with the pretty music of their chink.
Perhaps your spiritual wealth is such
A golden truth or two don’t count for much.

You say that you’ve no patience with such stuff
As by Rénan is writ, and when you read
(Why do you read?) have hardly strength enough
To hold your hand from flinging the vile screed
Into the fire. That were a wasteful deed
Which you’d repent in sackcloth extra rough;
For books cost money, and I’m told you care
To lay up treasures Here as well as There.

I fear, good, pious soul, that you mistake
Your thrift for toleration. Never mind:
Rénan in any case would hardly break
His great, strong, charitable heart to find
The bats and owls of your myopic kind
Pained by the light that his ideas make.
’Tis Truth’s best purpose to shine in at holes
Where cower the Kembles, to confound their souls!

A Word to the Unwise

Charles Main, of the firm of Main & Winchester, has ordered a grand mausoleum for his plot in Mountain View Cemetery.

City Newspaper

Charles Main, of Main & Winchester, attend
With friendly ear the chit-chat of a friend
Who knows you not, yet knows that you and he
Travel two roads that have a common end.

We journey forward through the time allowed,
I humbly bending, you erect and proud.
Our heads alike will stable soon the worm⁠—
The one that’s lifted, and the one that’s bowed.

You in your mausoleum shall repose,
I where it pleases Him who sleep bestows;
What matter whether one so little worth
Shall stain the marble or shall feed the rose?

Charles Main, I had a friend who died one day.
A metal casket held his honored clay.
Of cyclopean architecture stood
The splendid vault where he was laid away.

A dozen years, and lo! the roots of grass
Had burst asunder all the joints; the brass,
The gilded ornaments, the carven stones
Lay tumbled all together in a mass.

A dozen years! That taxes your belief.
Make it a thousand if the time’s too brief.
’Twill be the same to you; when you are dead
You cannot even count your days of grief.

Suppose a pompous monument you raise
Till on its peak the solar splendor blaze
While yet about its base the night is black;
But will it give your glory length of days?

Say, when beneath your rubbish has been thrown,
Some rogue to reputation all unknown⁠—
Men’s backs being turned⁠—should lift his thieving hand,
Efface your name and substitute his own,

Whose then would be the monument? To whom
Would be the fame? Forgotten in your gloom⁠—
Your very name forgotten⁠—ah, my friend,
The name is all that’s rescued by the tomb.

For memory of worth and work we go
To other records than a stone can show.
These lacking, naught remains; with these
The stone is needless for the world will know.

Then build your mausoleum if you must,
And creep into it with a perfect trust;
But in the twinkling of an eye the plow
Shall pass without obstruction through your dust.

Another movement of the pendulum,
And, lo! the desert-haunting wolf shall come,
And, seated on the spot, shall howl by night
O’er rotting cities, desolate and dumb.

On the Platform

When Dr. Bill Bartlett stepped out of the hum
Of Mammon’s distracting and wearisome strife
To stand and deliver a lecture on “Some
Conditions of Intellectual Life,”
I cursed the offender who gave him the hall
To lecture on any conditions at all!

But he rose with a fire divine in his eye,
Haranguing with endless abundance of breath,
Till I slept; and I dreamed of a gibbet reared high,
And Dr. Bill Bartlett was dressing for death.
And I thought in my dream: “These conditions, no doubt,
Are bad for the life he was talking about.”

So I cried (pray remember this all was a dream):
“Get off of the platform!⁠—it isn’t the