Sunday work be held—
Work not at all unless compelled.
Honor thy parents, and perchance
Their wills thy fortunes may advance.
Kill not—death liberates thy foe
From persecution’s constant woe.
Kiss not thy neighbor’s wife. Of course
There’s no objection to divorce.
To steal were folly, for ’tis plain
In cheating there is greater gain.
Bear not false witness. Shake your head
And say that you have “heard it said.”
Who stays to covet ne’er will catch
An opportunity to snatch.
A misunderstanding? Why, that’s a great scandal!
So stick to the weapon you know how to handle.
The tongue is a very uncertain convincer;
Don’t draw it at all—keep it in, keep it in, sir.
I never have heard it was any great labor
To dig out your meaning when swinging your sabre.
Even dull Filipino (ah, green be the bed of him!)
Can manage to get it somehow through the head of him.
Censor Literarum
So, Parson Stebbins, you’ve released your chin
To say that here, and here, we press-folk ail.
’Tis a great thing an editor to skin
And hang his faulty pelt upon a nail
(If over-eared, it has, at least, no tail)
And, for an admonition against sin,
Point out its maculations with a rod,
And act, in short, the gentleman of God.
’Twere needless cruelty to spoil your sport
By comment, critical or merely rude;
But you, too, have, according to report,
Despite your posing as a holy dude,
Imperfect spiritual pulchritude
For so severe a judge. May’t please the court,
We shall appeal and take our case at once
Before that higher court, a taller dunce.
Sir, what were you without the press? What spreads
The fame of your existence, once a week,
From the Pacific Mail dock to the Heads,
Warning the people you’re about to wreak
Upon the human ear your Sunday freak?—
Whereat the most betake them to their beds,
Though some prefer to slumber in the pews
And nod assent to your hypnotic views.
Unhappy man! can you not still your tongue
When (like a luckless brat afflict with worms,
By cruel fleas intolerably stung,
Or with a pang in its small lap) it squirms?
Still must it vulgarize your feats of lung?
There were no better preachering beneath
The sun if you’d naught there behind your teeth.
Borrowed Brains
Writer folk across the bay
Take the pains to see and say—
All their upward palms in air:
“Joaquin Miller’s cut his hair!”
Hasten, hasten, writer folk—
In the gutters rake and poke,
If by God’s exceeding grace
You may hit upon the place
Where the barber threw at length
Samson’s literary strength.
Find it, find it if you can;
Happy the successful man!
He has but to put one strand
In his beaver’s inner band
And his intellect will soar
As it never did before!
While an inch of it remains
He will noted be for brains,
And at last (’twill so befall)
Fit to cease to write at all.
Ye Fyghtynge Seventh
It is the gallant Seventh—
It fyghteth faste and free!
God wot the where it fyghteth
I ne desyre to be.
The Gonfalon it flyeth,
Seeming a Flayme in Sky;
The Bugel loud yblowen is,
Which sayeth, Doe and dye!
And (O good Saints defende us
Agaynst the Woes of Warr)
Drawn Tongues are flashing deadly
To smyte the Foeman sore!
With divers kinds of Riddance
The smoaking Earth is wet,
And all aflowe to seaward goe
The Torrents wide of Sweat!
The Thunder of the Captens,
And eke the Shouting, mayketh
Such horrid Din the Soule within
The boddy of me quayketh!
Who fyghteth the bold Seventh?
What haughty Power defyes?
Their Colonel ’tis they drubben sore,
And dammen too his Eyes!
Indicted
Dear Bruner, once we had a little talk
(That is to say, ’twas I did all the talking)
About the manner of your moral walk:
How devious the trail you made in stalking,
On level ground, your law-protected game—
“Another’s Dollar” is, I think, its name.
Your crooked course more recently is not
So blamable; for, truly, you have stumbled
On evil days; and ’tis your luckless lot
To traverse spaces (with a spirit humbled,
Contrite, dejected and divinely sad)
Where, ’tis confessed, the walking’s mighty bad.
Jordan, the song says, is a road (I thought
It was a river) that is hard to travel;
And Dublin, if you’d find it, must be sought
Along a highway with more rocks than gravel.
In difficulty neither can compete
With that wherein you navigate your feet.
As once George Gorham said of Pixley, so
I say of you: “The prison yawns before you,
The turnkey stalks behind!” Now will you go?
Or lag, and let that functionary floor you?
To change the metaphor—you seem to be
Between Judge Wallace and the deep, deep sea!
Over the Border
O, justice, you have fled, to dwell
In Mexico, unstrangled,
Lest you should hang as high as—well,
As Haman dangled.
(I know not if his cord be twanged,
Or the King proved forgiving.
’Tis hard to think of Haman hanged,
And Haymond living.)
Yes, as I said: in mortal fear
To Mexico you journeyed;
For you were on your trial here,
And ill attorneyed.
The Law had long regarded you
As an extreme offender.
Religion looked upon you, too,
With thoughts untender.
The Press to you was cold as snow,
For sin you’d always call so.
In Politics you were de trop,
In Morals also.
All this is accurately true
And, faith! there might be more said;
But—well, to save your thrapple you
Fled, as aforesaid.
You’re down in Mexico—that’s plain
As that the sun is risen;
For Daniel Burns down there his chain
Drags round in prison.
To an Insolent Attorney
So, Hall McAllister, you’ll not be warned—
My protest slighted, admonition scorned!
To save your scoundrel client from a cell
As loth to swallow him as he to swell
Its sum of meals insurgent (it decries
All wars intestinal with meats that rise)
You turn your scurril tongue against the press
And damn the agency you ought to bless.
Had not the press with all its hundred eyes
Discerned the wolf beneath the sheep’s disguise
And raised the cry upon him, he to-day
Would lack your company, and you would lack his pay.
Talk not of “hire” and consciences for sale—
You whose profession ’tis to threaten,
