Poetry

epub:type="title">Mr. Justice Field

Here sleeps one of the greatest students
Of jurisprudence.
Nature endowed him with the gift
Of the juristhrift.
All points of law alike he threw
The dice to settle.
Those honest cubes were loaded true
With railway metal.

V

General B. F. Butler

Thy flesh to earth, thy soul to God,
We gave, O gallant brother;
And o’er thy grave the awkward squad
Fired into one another!

VI

Reparation

Beneath this monument which rears its head,
A giant note of admiration⁠—dead,
His life extinguished like a taper’s flame,
John Ericsson is lying in his fame.
Behold how massive is the lofty shaft;
How fine the product of the sculptor’s craft;
The gold how lavishly applied; the great
Man’s statue how impressive and sedate!
Think what the cost was! It would ill become
Our modesty to specify the sum;
Suffice it that a fair percent we’re giving
Of what we robbed him of when he was living.

VII

Disincorporated

Of Corporal Tanner the head and the trunk
Are here in unconsecrate ground duly sunk.
His legs in the South claim the patriot’s tear,
But, stranger, you needn’t be blubbering here.

VIII

A Kit

Here Ingalls, sorrowing, has laid
The tools of his infernal trade⁠—
His pen and tongue. So sharp they grew,
An such destruction from them flew,
His hand was wounded when he wrote,
And when he spoke he cut his throat.

IX

Disjunctus

Within this humble mausoleum
Poor Guiteau’s flesh you’ll find.
His bones are kept in a museum,
And Tillman has his mind.

X

A Trencher-Knight

Stranger, uncover; here you have in view
The monument of Chauncey M. Depew,
Eater and orator, the whole world round
For feats of tongue and tooth alike renowned.
Dining his way to eminence, he rowed
With knife and fork up water-ways that flowed
From lakes of favor⁠—pulled with all his force
And found each river sweeter than the source.

Like rats, obscure beneath a kitchen floor,
Gnawing and rising till obscure no more,
He ate his way to eminence, and Fame
Inscribes in gravy his immortal name.

A trencher-knight, he, mounted on his belly,
So spurred his charger that its sides were jelly.
Grown desperate at last, it reared and threw him,
And Indigestion, overtaking, slew him.

XI

A Vice-President

Here the remains of Schuyler Colfax lie;
Born, all the world knows when, and God knows why.
In ’71 he filled the public eye,
In ’72 he bade the world good-bye;
In God’s good time, with a protesting sigh,
He came to life just long enough to die.

XII

A Wasted Life

Of Morgan here lies the unspirited clay,
Who secrets of Masonry swore to betray.
He joined the great Order and studied with zeal
The awful arcana he meant to reveal.
At last in chagrin by his own hand he fell⁠—
There was nothing to learn, there was nothing to tell.
The Masons are said to have killed him. Not so⁠—
Even a secret so foul, they’re compelled to forego.

XIII

Loring Pickering

(After Pope)

Here rests a writer, great but not immense,
Born destitute of feeling and of sense.
No power he but o’er his brain desired⁠—
How not to suffer it to be inspired.
Ideas unto him were all unknown,
Proud of the words which, only, were his own.
So unreflecting, so confused his mind,
Torpid in error, indolently blind,
A fever Heaven to quicken him applied,
But rather than revive, the sluggard died.

XIV

A Water-Pirate

Pause, stranger⁠—whence you lightly tread
Bill Carr’s immoral part has fled.
For him no heart of woman burned,
But all the rivers’ heads he turned.
Alas! he now lifts up his eyes
In torment and for water cries,
Entreating that he may procure
One drop to cool his parched McClure!

XV

C. P. Berry

Here’s crowbait!⁠—ravens, too, and daws
Flock hither to advance their caws,
And, with a sudden courage armed,
Devour the foe who once alarmed⁠—
In life and death a fair deceit:
Nor strong to harm nor good to eat.
King bogey of the scarecrow host,
When known the least affrighting most,
Though light his hand (his mind was dark)
He left on earth a straw Berry mark.

XVI

The Rev. Joseph Hemphill

He preached that sickness he could floor
By prayer and by commanding;
When sick himself he sent for four
Physicians in good standing.
He was struck dead despite their care,
For, fearing their dissension,
He secretly put up a prayer,
Thus drawing God’s attention.

XVII

Jay Gould lies here. When he was newly dead
He looked so natural that round his bed
The people stood, in silence all, to weep.
They thought, poor souls! that he did only sleep.

XVIII

Cynic perforce from studying mankind
In the false volume of his single mind,
He damned his fellows for his own unworth,
And, bad himself, thought nothing good on earth.
Yet, still so judging and so erring still,
Observing well, but understanding ill,
His learning all was got by dint of sight,
And what he learned by day he lost by night.
When hired to flatter he would never cease
Till those who’d paid for praises paid for peace.
Not wholly miser and but half a knave,
He yearned to squander but he lived to save,
And did not, for he could not, cheat the grave.
Hic jacet Pixley, scribe and muleteer:
Step lightly, stranger, anywhere but here.

XIX

McAllister, of talents rich and rare,
Lies at this spot at finish of his race.
Alike to him if it is here or there:
The one spot that he cared for was the ace.

XX

Here lies Joseph Redding, who gave us the catfish.
He dined upon every fish except that fish.
’Twas touching to hear him expounding his fad
With a heart full of zeal and a mouth full of shad.
The catfish meowed with unspeakable woe
When Death, the lone fisherman, landed their Jo.

XXI

Judge Sawyer, whom in vain the people tried
To push from power, here is laid aside.
Death only from the bench could ever start
That clinging surface, his immortal part.

XXII

John Irish went, one luckless day,
To loaf and fish at San Jose.
He got no loaf, he got no fish:
They brained him with an empty dish!
They laid him in this place asleep⁠—
O come, ye crocodiles, and weep.

XXIII

In Sacramento City