slave,
May jackasses sing o’er your grandfather’s grave!”
For Mayor
O Abner Doble—whose “catarrhal name”
Budd of the same might envy—’tis a rough
Rude thing to say, but it is plain enough
Your name is to be sneezed at: its acclaim
Will “fill the speaking trump of future fame”
With an impeded utterance—a puff
Suggesting that a pinch or two of snuff
Would clear the tube and somewhat disinflame.
Nay, Abner Doble, you’ll not get from me
My voice and influence: I’ll cheer instead,
Some other man; for when my voice ascends a
Tall pinnacle of praise, and at high C
Sustains a chosen name, it shan’t be said
My influence is naught but influenza.
A Mine for Reformers
When God resolved to make the world
He gathered all the matter
In Chaos that was mixed and whirled
In unassorted scatter.
He separated that from this,
And tagged on each a label,
Naming all kinds of substances
As far as he was able.
He lacked of learning, though, enough
To execute his aim, for
There still remained a lot of stuff
He hadn’t any name for.
And this (the world completed) lies
Without concatenation—
All unassorted—and supplies
Ideals for all Creation.
In Pickle
The journals say that the embalming done
To Garfield’s body badly was begun,
Faultily finished all too soon—in short
Was of a most unsatisfactory sort.
Unsatisfactory? How so? To whom?
Has the long sullen silence of the tomb
At last been broken? Is rebellion’s head
Reared in the subject province of the dead?
Unsatisfactory, forsooth! Who’d wish
To satisfy, in salting it, a fish?
With spices when the conscious cook supplies
The autumnal mince-meat for the winter pies
He makes no question if the meat prefer
Clove, cinnamon or pepper, sage or myrrh.
“There was,” says Chowder if a clam upbraid,
“No thought of pleasing thee when I was made.”
What! shall the dead with impudence complain
Of how we’ve potted each inert remain?—
The pickle criticise and even condemn,
As if the purpose were to pleasure them?
Their cure they rightly canvass in disease;
We’ll cure them after in what way we please.
With blazing eulogies in crowded halls,
And mourning emblems blackening the walls;
With gorgeous funerals, both at the spot
Where you were buried and where you were not—
A dummy funeral’s inutile show
Fifty to manifest a dummy woe;
With black-ruled journals, selling all at twice
The customary uneventful price;
With guarded tomb and monument as fine
As any light-house on the ocean line—
Garfield, if still you are dissatisfied
You might as profitably not have died.
So you’re complaining—vive la bagatelle!
The brine, no doubt, was weak, and cheap as well,
Got for a song an undertaker sang
(We paid him for it through the nose—the pang
More keen than all our sorrow.) Even so,
Your bones that served us for a public show
Outlast already our unsalted woe.
James Montague, Poet
’Tis said he wrote with wondrous ease,
And that is here conceded;
But anybody, if he please,
Can write such verse as he did.
Although for James ’twas easy quite,
Another’s difficulty might
In self-defense be pleaded.
A Cheating Preacher
Munhall, to have my soul you bravely try,
Although, to save my soul, I can’t say why.
’Tis naught to you, to me however much—
Why, bless it! you might save a million such,
Yet lose your own; for still the “means of grace”
That you employ to turn us from the place
By the arch-enemy of souls frequented
Are those which to ensnare us he invented!
I do not say you utter falsehoods—I
Would scorn to give to ministers the lie:
They cannot fight—their calling has estopped it.
True, I did not persuade them to adopt it.
But, Munhall, when you say the Devil dwells
In all the breasts of all the infidels—
Making a lot of individual Hells,
You talk as I should if some world I trod
Where lying is acceptable to God.
I don’t at all object—forbid it Heaven!—
That your discourse you temperately leaven
With airy reference to wicked souls
Cursing impenitent on glowing coals,
Nor quarrel with your fancy, blithe and fine,
Which represents the wickedest as mine.
Each ornament of style my spirit eases:
The subject saddens, but the manner pleases.
But when you “deal damnation round” ’twere sweet
To think hereafter that you did not cheat.
Deal, and let all accept what you allot ’em;
But, blast you! you are dealing from the bottom!
A Crocodile
Nay, Peter Robertson, ’tis not for you
To blubber o’er Max Taubles for he’s dead.
By Heaven! my hearty, if you only knew
How better is a grave-worm in the head
Than brains like yours—how far more decent, too,
A tomb in far Korea than a bed
Where Peter lies with Peter, you would covet
His happier state and, dying, learn to love it.
In the recesses of the silent tomb
No Maunderings of yours disturb the peace.
Your mental bag-pipe, droning like the gloom
Of Hades audible, perforce must cease
From troubling further; and that crack o’ doom,
Your mouth, shaped like a long bow, shall release
In vain such shafts of wit as it can utter—
The ear of death can’t even hear them flutter.
The American Party
Oh, Marcus D. Boruck, me hearty,
I sympathize wid ye, poor lad!
A man that’s shot out of his party
Is mighty onlucky, bedad!
An’ the sowl o’ that man is sad.
But, Marcus, gossoon, ye desarve it—
Ye know for yerself that ye do,
For ye j’ined not intendin’ to sarve it,
But hopin’ to make it sarve you,
Though the roll of its members wuz two.
The other wuz Pixley, an’ “Surely,”
Ye said, “he’s a kite that wull sail.”
An’ so ye hung till him securely,
Enactin’ the role of a tail.
But there wuzn’t the ghost of a gale!
But the party to-day has behind it
A powerful backin’, I’m told;
For just enough Irish have j’ined it
(An’ I’m m’anin’ to be enrolled)
To kick ye out into the cold.
It’s hard on ye, darlint, I’m thinkin’—
So young—so American, too,
Wid bypassers grinnin’ an’ winkin’,
An’ sayin’, wid ref’rence to you:
“Get onto the murtherin’ Joo!”
Republicans never will take ye—
They had ye for many a year;
An’ Democrats—angels forsake ye!—
If ever ye come about here
We’ll brand ye and scallop yer ear!
Uncoloneled
Though war-signs fail in time of peace, they say,
Two awful portents gloom the public mind:
All Mexico
