Poetry

over-smart.
The firm’s an old one, but not quite respected
Since you in statesmanship have been detected.

William F. Smith

Light lie the earth upon his dear dead heart,
And dreams disturb him never.
Be deeper peace than Paradise his part
Forever and forever.

Juventus Mundi

Dr. Allen Griffiths is an audible Theosopher⁠—
A student of Blavatsky, inconsolable for loss of her.
He says (he’s seen the figures, too) the human race was flourishing
Three hundred million years upon this planet, ever nourishing
The flame of immortality (which always, though, was flickering
Until it burned, a still, eternal red, in Mr. Pickering)
Before that microbe-chief of all the spiritual faculties,
The Faculty of Thinking, heard of Man and lightly tackled his
Poor brain, then sleeping sweetly in his undefended cranium.
Unable to distinguish a surmise from a geranium.
O happy, happy period of mental independency!
O golden, golden age of Theosophical ascendency!

Two Guides

Ingersoll has neither philosophy nor logic. He has only sentiment, wit and rhetoric.

Bulletin

You, Fitch, are known to be a Deacon⁠—
A shining light, a holy beacon
Upon the walls of Zion, blazing
With an effulgency amazing.

And yet, I think, between the two
(Bob Ingersoll, I mean, and you)
A man in want of light to read
Between the lines of nature’s Creed

Would rather scrutinize Creation
By Robert’s clear illumination,
Than blind his eyes with smoke and vapor
From your infernal sputtering taper.

Though Ingersoll, perchance, had not
Of wisdom or of truth one jot,
I’d rather miss with him the clew
To life than follow it with you.

In Warning

They tell us, dear Kipling, you’re coming to shoot
In the hills of the wide, wild West.
There’s a lot of cost and a risk to boot⁠—
I don’t at all think it is best,
And hope it is only a jest.

For, Rudyard, although you’re a terrible swell
You’re not in high favor out here;
For you said San Francisco was meaner than⁠—well,
You said it was very small beer
And Chicago uncommonly queer.

You put your legs under our tables, you did,
You dined at the Jollidog Club;
And when of your hunger you well were rid
(And your manners too) like a cub
You snarled at the speeches and grub.

You said⁠—I don’t know the one half that you said,
But I know you pretended to meet
Some folk that existed not out of your head
Or an English comical sheet.
And you vilified Kearny street!

Our statesman apparently didn’t get far
In the favor of one so too,
Too utterly fine. Nor the plump cigar
Nor the shiny hat could woo
The sweet and beautiful You.

But hardest of all our hearts you wrung
With assorted pangs and woes
When you said you could speak the English tongue,
But not the American nose.
And you damned our orators o’s!

For all of this and for all of that
You’d better abate your flame,
And remain where pheasants are tame and fat
And the sportsman takes his aim,
As a general thing, at the game.

Out here when we go to shoot, perhaps
Nor beast nor bird we see;
So we just let go at the Britisher chaps
Who have made remarks too free,
And the same surcease to be.

Apparition

“The ghosts are all gone,” the Bulletin cries.
O neighbor, good neighbor, where are your eyes?
Gruesome and ghastly, beneath your nose
A ghost is stalking that never goes.
With a stony eye and a brow of gloom,
It enters the editorial room,
It haunts the passages, haunts the stairs⁠—
Editors, printers alike it scares;
But the reader most it appals, for still
It writes and writes with a real quill,
On real paper, in real ink,
The phantoms of thoughts that dead men think.
Sheeted ideas from wormy brains
Troop o’er the paper, and spooks of strains
Of sepulchral laughter seem to float
In the air as the ghost reads what it wrote;
And a faint, white, phosphorescent ray⁠—
The visible eloquence of decay⁠—
Gleams on its lips as it reads each word
In a tone that no mortal before has heard.
Copy to printer and ghost to tomb⁠—
Silent the editorial room.
O the Bulletin ghost is indeed a most
Remarkable kind of a Bulletin ghost.
Who sees it cries, as his heart were bled:
“O God! will Bill Bartlett never stay dead?”

A Creditable Collision

There was once a brave collision
In Imaginary Bay,
When a steamer with precision
Clove its comfortable way
Through another, which had hospitably stood
To receive it, as a civil steamer should.

Then the people on the latter
Said they didn’t understand,
But they thought they’d better scatter
To the most adjacent land;
And the people on the former said: “That’s so⁠—
You will find it sixty fathoms down below.”

Then the skipper of the vessel
Which was sinking in the brine
Said to t’other one: “I guess I’ll
Trouble you to drop a line.”
“Well, just give me your address,” was the reply,
“I am busy but I’ll write you by-and-by.”

Then the carpenter whose function
Was to mend the leaky boat
Said: “So wide is our disjunction
That we cannot longer float.
See the rats already leave us!” And so he
Up and hove his kit among them in the sea.

Though these incidents are cheerful
For a landsman to relate,
Yet the passengers were fearful
Of a melancholy fate;
For their knowledge was imperfect of the way
That the fishes have of breathing in the bay.

Some of them, who were accounted
Quite unmannerly and rude,
On the floating steamer mounted,
Saying: “Hope we don’t intrude.”
But the others, with politeness rare and fine,
Said their tickets were not good upon that line.

But the skipper of the wetter
Ship, the pilot and the mate⁠—
Nothing ever yet was better
Than the way they met their fate;
For the perils that beset them in their climb
They encountered with alacrity sublime.

When the troubles all were ended
And the living safe in port
Invitation was extended
For them all to come to court.
Where the officers (they afterward explained)
Were with deferential kindness entertained.

Twenty Consuls, ten Inspectors,
Thirty Coroners were there,
Eighty-seven skilled objectors
And a Notary to swear;
And before that court the sailor-people sighed
And expounded how the passengers had lied.

The unanimous decision
Of that high and mighty court