void” (for such
Is Law’s demand)—alighting where ’tis much
Too cold for comfort. There you may be found
Piled up on Fame’s eternal dumping-ground.
If you’ve a memory you still can tell
Yourself how singularly hard you fell,
And no one “kissed the place to make it well.”
I know not (Mr. Root knows little else)
Why Sam should fare so better far than Nelse,
But so he did, for scarcely did he light
Ere Mr. Secretary gripped him tight,
Stood him erect, removed his coat and shirt,
And, finding on his person where it hurt,
Performed, in pity for his hapless plight,
The appropriate consolatory rite.
Miles, you are lucky! True, you’re badly bruised,
The wound administered, the balm refused;
But if too rashly you had dared to strip
Your aching back for the official lip,
Consider the temptation (none can fight it
Who has Administration teeth) to bite it!
Privation
With her grief the widow was so engrossed
As she rode at the hearse’s rear,
That I really think the dead man’s ghost
Must have shed the ghost of a tear.
She murmured and moaned and wiped her eyes
And blew her pale nose for relief,
Then started and cried, as in pained surprise,
“I’ve forgotten my handkerchief!
“O, what shall I do when we get to the grave
And the coffin is put in the ground?
I know I shall weep, for I cannot be brave
With those staring people all round.”
“Be calm,” said one; “there is nothing forgot,
For your handkerchief you bring—
You are holding it—see.” Said the widow: “What!
This pokey old linen thing?”
To One in Custody
Villain! for years you’ve plied your awful trade
For wife, for widow and—no, not for maid:
Even you’ll confess in chastity one true
Advantage—its immunity from you.
About your hand, in clamorous appeal,
As round the blade of Calmar, shriek and wheel,
Like flights of Arctic seabirds, the forlorn
Pale ghosts—mothers and babes unborn.
Now, villain, now, I pray your time has come—
Mercy be deaf and intercession dumb!
No more, red-handed, in the path to life
May you be found alurk with eager knife,
Nor longer o’er the door to death display
The sign, “For Ladies.” Lo! day after day
For twenty years I’ve read on every wall
A handwriting prophetic of your fall.
And now the last dread syllable I spell
That damns your body to a felon’s cell—
Your soul has long awaited you in Hell!
For a Revised Version
Oh, deem it not presumption, Lord,
In me to revise Thy holy Word—
No jot or tittle I’d efface,
No menace dire, nor pledge of grace.
No poetry I’d blot (although it’s
Well known to Thee that I hate poets),
But humbly, reverently try
Some missing mandates to supply.
For lo! I fall of dunces ill,
Who’ve got by heart Thy written will;
I turn, behold! in tears away
From rogues Thy bidding who obey.
Wherever “Thou shalt not” occurs
I’d add “Thou shalt the exact reverse,”
And many a virtue, too, compel
(By plain command and threat of hell)
Which has no corresponding vice
To interdict in terms precise.
Thus I’d exterminate the brood
Of rascals negatively good—
Men Bible-clear, who ought to smart
Beneath the lash at tail of cart.
Each soul (masks, too, would then be thinner)
If not a saint, should be a sinner.
In error, Lord, if I am found,
Observe how clouds my vision bound:
Forgive my narrowness of sight,
And bless me with the larger light
In Thine imperfect law to trace
The perfect purpose of Thy grace.
The Mormon Question
By J‑qu‑n M‑ll‑r
I said I will shake myself out of my clothes,
I will roll up my sleeves, I will spit on my hands
(The hands that I kissed to the sun in the lands
To the north, to the east, to the south, and the west
Of every sea that is under the sun),
I will go to the land that the Gentile loathes
As he gathers his one small wife to his breast
And curses and loathes till his life is done.
I will go to the place of the Mormon: the place
Where the jackass rabbit is first in the race
And the woodchuck chatters in meaningless glee—
Chatters and twists all his marvelous face—
Twists it and chatters and looks like me.
And I rose in the strongest strength of my strength,
With my breast of brass and my hair’s full length,
And I shook myself out of my clothes in the land
Of the Mormons, and stood there and kissed my hand.
An Election Expense
Stanford, when recently you gave Tom Fitch
Ten thousand dollars, gold, to “stump the State”
(A circumstance of no importance, which
You deemed it right, however, to relate
To the grand jury) did you calculate
That it and other sums, which I will not
Embarrass you by naming, would come back,
As bread upon the waters, piping hot,
With added pancakes in an ample stack?
’Twere better, sir, to cast your bread-and-butter
(You’d get that back, at least) into the gutter.
Tom Fitch’s “silver tongue” is very well
If let alone—though that he’ll never do.
For he must live by what he has to sell,
And silver should be “free,” that’s very true.
But how the devil could the thing help you?
Like an unruly child, it kicks and squalls
In mutiny whene’er he moves his chin,
And ne’er is faithful except when he falls
Asleep in Je—I mean, of course, in Gin.
Tom’s tongue make Senators? No, no, that’s gammon;
They’re made by Mr. Stow and Mr. Mammon.
I know they are, for once I saw the two
Hobnobbing in a friendly kind of way
Up there at Sacramento. It is true
You were not with them. I heard statesmen say
You took good care to tarry at the Bay,
Where you could be “surprised” when Creed should claim
Your ear, and hope you’d pardon him, and sigh,
And say he’d ventured to propose your name,
And that all men had thrown their hats so high
That none had yet come down, and split their collars
With cheers, and—would you loan him twenty dollars?
A famous person said that God and he
Were a majority; so, by your leave,
Are you and Mammon; but it seems to me
That you and he on this Thanksgiving eve
Should drink a stirrup-cup (for I perceive
You ride your philanthropic hobby—Ned
Curtis astride behind you) and so part.
For, after all is done and all is said.
Mammon & Stanford are not
