Chapter 9
Says Anderson, Theosophist: "Among the many that exist In modern halls, Some lived in ancient Egypt's clime And in their childhood saw the prime Of Karnak's walls."
Ah, Anderson, if that is true 'T is my conviction, sir, that you Are one of those That once resided by the Nile, Peer to the sacred Crocodile, Heir to his woes.
My judgment is, the holy Cat Mews through your larynx (and your hat) These many years. Through you the godlike Onion brings Its melancholy sense of things, And moves to tears.
In you the Bull divine again Bellows and paws the dusty plain, To nature true. I challenge not his ancient hate But, lowering my knurly pate, Lock horns with you.
And though Reincarnation prove A creed too stubborn to remove, And all your school Of Theosophs I cannot scare-- All the more earnestly I swear That you're a fool.
You'll say that this is mere abuse Without, in fraying you, a use. That's plain to see With only half an eye. Come, now, Be fair, be fair,--consider how It eases _me_!
THE HUMORIST.
"What is that, mother?" "The funny man, child. His hands are black, but his heart is mild."
"May I touch him, mother?" "'T were foolishly done: He is slightly touched already, my son."
"O, why does he wear such a ghastly grin?" "That's the outward sign of a joke within."
"Will he crack it, mother?" "Not so, my saint; 'T is meant for the _Saturday Livercomplaint."_
"Does he suffer, mother?" "God help him, yes!-- A thousand and fifty kinds of distress."
"What makes him sweat so?" "The demons that lurk In the fear of having to go to work."
"Why doesn't he end, then, his life with a rope?" "Abolition of Hell has deprived him of hope."
MONTEFIORE.
I saw--'twas in a dream, the other night-- A man whose hair with age was thin and white: One hundred years had bettered by his birth, And still his step was firm, his eye was bright.
Before him and about him pressed a crowd. Each head in reverence was bared and bowed, And Jews and Gentiles in a hundred tongues Extolled his deeds and spoke his fame aloud.
I joined the throng and, pushing forward, cried, "Montefiore!" with the rest, and vied In efforts to caress the hand that ne'er To want and worth had charity denied.
So closely round him swarmed our shouting clan He scarce could breathe, and taking from a pan A gleaming coin he tossed it o'er our heads, And in a moment was a lonely man!
A WARNING.
Cried Age to Youth: "Abate your speed!-- The distance hither's brief indeed." But Youth pressed on without delay-- The shout had reached but half the way.
DISCRETION.
SHE:
I'm told that men have sometimes got Too confidential, and Have said to one another what They--well, you understand. I hope I don't offend you, sweet, But are you sure that _you're_ discreet?
HE:
'Tis true, sometimes my friends in wine Their conquests _do_ recall, But none can truly say that mine Are known to him at all. I never, never talk you o'er-- In truth, I never get the floor.
AN EXILE.
'Tis the census enumerator A-singing all forlorn: It's ho! for the tall potater, And ho! for the clustered corn. The whiffle-tree bends in the breeze and the fine Large eggs are a-ripening on the vine.
"Some there must be to till the soil And the widow's weeds keep down. I wasn't cut out for rural toil But they _won't_ let me live in town! They 're not so many by two or three, As they think, but ah! they 're too many for me."
Thus the census man, bowed down with care, Warbled his wood-note high. There was blood on his brow and blood in his hair, But he had no blood in his eye.
THE DIVISION SUPERINTENDENT.
Baffled he stands upon the track-- The automatic switches clack.
Where'er he turns his solemn eyes The interlocking signals rise.
The trains, before his visage pale, Glide smoothly by, nor leave the rail.
No splinter-spitted victim he Hears uttering the note high C.
In sorrow deep he hangs his head, A-weary--would that he were dead.
Now suddenly his spirits rise-- A great thought kindles in his eyes.
Hope, like a headlight's vivid glare, Splendors the path of his despair.
His genius shines, the clouds roll back-- "I'll place obstructions on the track!"
PSYCHOGRAPHS.
Says Gerald Massey: "When I write, a band Of souls of the departed guides my hand." How strange that poems cumbering our shelves, Penned by immortal parts, have none themselves!
TO A PROFESSIONAL EULOGIST.
Newman, in you two parasites combine: As tapeworm and as graveworm too you shine. When on the virtues of the quick you've dwelt, The pride of residence was all you felt (What vain vulgarian the wish ne'er knew To paint his lodging a flamboyant hue?) And when the praises of the dead you've sung, 'Twas appetite, not truth, inspired your tongue; As ill-bred men when warming to their wine Boast of its merit though it be but brine. Nor gratitude incites your song, nor should-- Even charity would shun you if she could. You share, 'tis true, the rich man's daily dole, But what you get you take by way of toll. Vain to resist you--vermifuge alone Has power to push you from your robber throne. When to escape you he's compelled to die Hey! presto!--in the twinkling of an eye You vanish as a tapeworm, reappear As graveworm and resume your curst career. As host no more, to satisfy your need He serves as dinner your unaltered greed. O thrifty sycophant of wealth and fame, Son of servility and priest of shame, While naught your mad ambition can abate To lick the spittle of the rich and great; While still like smoke your eulogies arise To soot your heroes and inflame our eyes; While still with holy oil, like that which ran Down Aaron's beard, you smear each famous man, I cannot choose but think it very odd It ne'er occurs to you to fawn on God.
FOR WOUNDS.
O bear me, gods, to some enchanted isle Where woman's tears can antidote her smile.
ELECTION DAY.
Despots effete upon tottering thrones Unsteadily poised upon dead men's bones, Walk up! walk up! the circus is free, And this wonderful spectacle you shall see: Millions of voters who mostly are fools-- Demagogues' dupes and candidates' tools, Armies of uniformed mountebanks, And braying disciples of brainless cranks. Many a week they've bellowed like beeves, Bitterly blackguarding, lying like thieves, Libeling freely the quick and the dead And painting the New Jerusalem red. Tyrants monarchical--emperors, kings, Princes and nobles and all such things-- Noblemen, gentlemen, step this way: There's nothing, the Devil excepted, to pay, And the freaks and curios here to be seen Are very uncommonly grand and serene.
No more with vivacity they debate, Nor cheerfully crack the illogical pate; No longer, the dull understanding to aid, The stomach accepts the instructive blade, Nor the stubborn heart learns what is what From a revelation of rabbit-shot; And vilification's flames--behold! Burn with a bickering faint and cold.
Magnificent spectacle!--every tongue Suddenly civil that yesterday rung (Like a clapper beating a brazen bell) Each fair reputation's eternal knell; Hands no longer delivering blows, And noses, for counting, arrayed in rows.
Walk up, gentlemen--nothing to pay-- The Devil goes back to Hell to-day.
THE MILITIAMAN.
"O warrior with the burnished arms-- With bullion cord and tassel-- Pray tell me of the lurid charms Of service and the fierce alarms: The storming of the castle, The charge across the smoking field, The rifles' busy rattle-- What thoughts inspire the men who wield The blade--their gallant souls how steeled And fortified in battle."
"Nay, man of peace, seek not to know War's baleful fascination-- The soldier's hunger for the foe, His dread of safety, joy to go To court annihilation. Though calling bugles blow not now, Nor drums begin to beat yet, One fear unmans me, I'll allow, And poisons all my pleasure: How If I should get my feet wet!"
"A LITERARY METHOD."
His poems Riley says that he indites Upon an empty stomach. Heavenly Powers, Feed him throat-full: for what the beggar writes Upon his empty stomach empties ours!
A WELCOME.
Because you call yourself Knights Templar, and There's neither Knight nor Temple in the land,-- Because you thus by vain pretense degrade To paltry purposes traditions grand,--
Because to cheat the ignorant you say The thing that's not, elated still to sway The crass credulity of gaping fools And women by fantastical display,--
Because no sacred fires did ever warm Your hearts, high knightly service to perform-- A woman's breast or coffer of a man The only citadel you dare to storm,--
Because while railing still at lord and peer, At pomp and fuss-and-feathers while you jeer, Each member of your order tries to graft A peacock's tail upon his barren rear,--
Because that all these things are thus and so, I bid you welcome to our city. Lo! You're free to come, and free to stay, and free As soon as it shall please you, sirs--to go.
A SERENADE.
"Sas agapo sas agapo," He sang beneath her lattice. "'Sas agapo'?" she murmured--"O, I wonder, now, what _that_ is!"
Was she less fair that she did bear So light a load of knowledge? Are loving looks got out of books, Or kisses taught in college?
Of woman's lore give me no more Than how to love,--in many A tongue men brawl: she speaks them all Who says "I love," in any.
THE WISE AND GOOD.
"O father, I saw at the church as I passed The populace gathered in numbers so vast That they couldn't get in; and their voices were low, And they looked as if suffering terrible woe."
"'Twas the funeral, child, of a gentleman dead For whom the great heart of humanity bled."
"What made it bleed, father, for every day Somebody passes forever away? Do the newspaper men print a column or more Of every person whose troubles are o'er?"
"O, no; they could never do that--and indeed, Though printers might print it, no reader would read. To the sepulcher all, soon or late, must be borne, But 'tis only the Wise and the Good that all mourn."
"That's right, father dear, but how can our eyes Distinguish in dead men the Good and the Wise?"
"That's easy enough to the stupidest mind: They're poor, and in dying leave nothing behind."
"Seest thou in mine eye, father, anything green? And takest thy son for a gaping marine? Go tell thy fine tale of the Wise and the Good Who are poor and lamented to babes in the wood."
And that horrible youth as I hastened away Was building a wink that affronted the day.
THE LOST COLONEL.
"'Tis a woeful yarn," said the sailor man bold Who had sailed the northern-lakes-- "No woefuler one has ever been told Exceptin' them called 'fakes.'"
"Go on, thou son of the wind and fog, For I burn to know the worst!" But his silent lip in a glass of grog Was dreamily immersed.
Then he wiped it on his sleeve and said: "It's never like that I drinks But what of the gallant gent that's dead I truly mournful thinks.
"He was a soldier chap--leastways As 'Colonel' he was knew; An' he hailed from some'rs where they raise A grass that's heavenly blue.
"He sailed as a passenger aboard The schooner 'Henery Jo.' O wild the waves and galeses roared, Like taggers in a show!
"But he sat at table that calm an' mild As if he never had let His sperit know that the waves was wild An' everlastin' wet!--
"Jest set with a bottle afore his nose, As was labeled 'Total Eclipse' (The bottle was) an' he frequent rose A glass o' the same to his lips.
"An' he says to me (for the steward slick Of the 'Henery Jo' was I): 'This sailor life's the very old Nick-- On the lakes it's powerful dry!'
"I says: 'Aye, aye, sir, it beats the Dutch. I hopes you'll outlast the trip.' But if I'd been him--an' I said as much-- I'd 'a' took a faster ship.
"His laughture, loud an' long an' free, Rang out o'er the tempest's roar. 'You're an elegant reasoner,' says he, 'But it's powerful dry ashore!'"
"O mariner man, why pause and don A look of so deep concern? Have another glass--go on, go on, For to know the worst I burn."
"One day he was leanin' over the rail, When his footing some way slipped, An' (this is the woefulest part o' my tale), He was accidental unshipped!
"The empty boats was overboard hove, As he swum in the 'Henery's wake'; But 'fore we had 'bouted ship he had drove From sight on the ragin' lake!"
"And so the poor gentleman was drowned-- And now I'm apprised of the worst." "What! him? 'Twas an hour afore he was found-- In the yawl--stone dead o' thirst!"
FOR TAT.
O, heavenly powers! will wonders never cease?-- Hair upon dogs and feathers upon geese! The boys in mischief and the pigs in mire! The drinking water wet! the coal on fire! In meadows, rivulets surpassing fair, Forever running, yet forever there! A tail appended to the gray baboon! A person coming out of a saloon! Last, and of all most marvelous to see, A female Yahoo flinging filth at me! If 'twould but stick I'd bear upon my coat May Little's proof that she is fit to vote.
A DILEMMA.
Filled with a zeal to serve my fellow men, For years I criticised their prose and verges: Pointed out all their blunders of the pen, Their shallowness of thought and feeling; then Damned them up hill and down with hearty curses!
They said: "That's all that he can do--just sneer, And pull to pieces and be analytic. Why doesn't he himself, eschewing fear, Publish a book or two, and so appear As one who has the right to be a critic?
"Let him who knows it all forbear to tell How little others know, but show his learning." The public added: "Who has written well May censure freely"--quoting Pope. I fell Into the trap and books began out-turning,--
Books by the score--fine prose and poems fair, And not a book of them but was a terror, They were so great and perfect; though I swear I tried right hard to work in, here and there, (My nature still forbade) a fault or error.
'Tis true, some wretches, whom I'd scratched, no doubt, Professed to find--but that's a trifling matter. Now, when the flood of noble books was out I raised o'er all that land a joyous shout, Till I was thought as mad as any hatter!
(Why hatters all are mad, I cannot say. 'T were wrong in their affliction to revile 'em, But truly, you'll confess 'tis very sad We wear the ugly things they make. Begad, They'd be less mischievous in an asylum!)
"Consistency, thou art a"--well, you're _paste_! When next I felt my demon in possession, And made the field of authorship a waste, All said of me: "What execrable taste, To rail at others of his own profession!"
Good Lord! where do the critic's rights begin Who has of literature some clear-cut notion, And hears a voice from Heaven say: "Pitch in"? He finds himself--alas, poor son of sin-- Between the devil and the deep blue ocean!
METEMPSYCHOSIS.
Once with Christ he entered Salem, Once in Moab bullied Balaam, Once by Apuleius staged He the pious much enraged. And, again, his head, as beaver, Topped the neck of Nick the Weaver. Omar saw him (minus tether-- Free and wanton as the weather: Knowing naught of bit or spur) Stamping over Bahram-Gur. Now, as Altgeld, see him joy As Governor of Illinois!
THE SAINT AND THE MONK.
Saint Peter at the gate of Heaven displayed The tools and terrors of his awful trade; The key, the frown as pitiless as night, That slays intending trespassers at sight, And, at his side in easy reach, the curled Interrogation points all ready to be hurled.
Straight up the shining cloudway (it so chanced No others were about) a soul advanced-- A fat, orbicular and jolly soul With laughter-lines upon each rosy jowl-- A monk so prepossessing that the saint Admired him, breathless, until weak and faint, Forgot his frown and all his questions too, Forgoing even the customary "Who?"-- Threw wide the gate and, with a friendly grin, Said, "'Tis a very humble home, but pray walk in."
The soul smiled pleasantly. "Excuse me, please-- Who's in there?" By insensible degrees The impudence dispelled the saint's esteem, As growing snores annihilate a dream. The frown began to blacken on his brow, His hand to reach for "Whence?" and "Why?" and "How?" "O, no offense, I hope," the soul explained; "I'm rather--well, particular. I've strained A point in coming here at all; 'tis said That Susan Anthony (I hear she's dead At last) and all her followers are here. As company, they'd be--confess it--rather queer."
The saint replied, his rising anger past: "What can I do?--the law is hard-and-fast, Albeit unwritten and on earth unknown-- An oral order issued from the Throne. By but one sin has Woman e'er incurred God's wrath. To accuse Them Loud of that would be absurd."
That friar sighed, but, calling up a smile, Said, slowly turning on his heel the while: "Farewell, my friend. Put up the chain and bar-- I'm going, so please you, where the pretty women are."
1895.
THE OPPOSING SEX.
The Widows of Ashur Are loud in their wailing: "No longer the 'masher' Sees Widows of Ashur!" So each is a lasher Of Man's smallest failing. The Widows of Ashur Are loud in their wailing.
The Cave of Adullam, That home of reviling-- No wooing can gull 'em In Cave of Adullam. No angel can lull 'em To cease their defiling The Cave of Adullam, That home of reviling.
At men they are cursing-- The Widows of Ashur; Themselves, too, for nursing The men they are cursing. The praise they're rehearsing Of every slasher At men. _They_ are cursing The Widows of Ashur.
A WHIPPER-IN.
[Commissioner of Pensions Dudley has established a Sunday-school and declares he will remove any clerk in his department who does not regularly attend.--_N.Y. World.]_
Dudley, great placeman, man of mark and note, Worthy of honor from a feeble pen Blunted in service of all true, good men, You serve the Lord--in courses, _table d'hôte: Au, naturel,_ as well as _à la Nick_-- "Eat and be thankful, though it make you sick."
O, truly pious caterer, forbear To push the Saviour and Him crucified _(Brochette_ you'd call it) into their inside Who're all unused to such ambrosial fare. The stomach of the soul makes quick revulsion Of aught that it has taken on compulsion.
I search the Scriptures, but I do not find That e'er the Spirit beats with angry wings For entrance to the heart, but sits and sings To charm away the scruples of the mind. It says: "Receive me, please; I'll not compel"-- Though if you don't you will go straight to Hell!
Well, that's compulsion, you will say. 'T is true: We cower timidly beneath the rod Lifted in menace by an angry God, But won't endure it from an ape like you. Detested simian with thumb prehensile, Switch _me_ and I would brain you with my pencil!
Face you the Throne, nor dare to turn your back On its transplendency to flog some wight Who gropes and stumbles in the infernal night Your ugly shadow lays along his track. O, Thou who from the Temple scourged the sin, Behold what rascals try to scourge it in!
JUDGMENT.
I drew aside the Future's veil And saw upon his bier The poet Whitman. Loud the wail And damp the falling tear.
"He's dead--he is no more!" one cried, With sobs of sorrow crammed; "No more? He's this much more," replied Another: "he is damned!"
1885.
THE FALL OF MISS LARKIN.
Hear me sing of Sally Larkin who, I'd have you understand, Played accordions as well as any lady in the land; And I've often heard it stated that her fingering was such That Professor Schweinenhauer was enchanted with her touch; And that beasts were so affected when her apparatus rang That they dropped upon their haunches and deliriously sang. This I know from testimony, though a critic, I opine, Needs an ear that is dissimilar in some respects to mine. She could sing, too, like a jaybird, and they say all eyes were wet When Sally and the ranch-dog were performing a duet-- Which I take it is a song that has to be so loudly sung As to overtax the strength of any single human lung. That, at least, would seem to follow from the tale I have to tell, Which (I've told you how she flourished) is how Sally Larkin fell.
One day there came to visit Sally's dad as sleek and smart A chap as ever wandered there from any foreign part. Though his gentle birth and breeding he did not at all obtrude It was somehow whispered round he was a simon-pure Dude. Howsoe'er that may have been, it was conspicuous to see That he _was_ a real Gent of an uncommon high degree. That Sally cast her tender and affectionate regards On this exquisite creation was, of course, upon the cards; But he didn't seem to notice, and was variously blind To her many charms of person and the merits of her mind, And preferred, I grieve to say it, to play poker with her dad, And acted in a manner that in general was bad.
One evening--'twas in summer--she was holding in her lap Her accordion, and near her stood that melancholy chap, Leaning up against a pillar with his lip in grog imbrued, Thinking, maybe, of that ancient land in which he was a Dude.
Then Sally, who was melancholy too, began to hum And elongate the accordion with a preluding thumb. Then sighs of amorosity from Sally L. exhaled, And her music apparatus sympathetically wailed. "In the gloaming, O my darling!" rose that wild impassioned strain, And her eyes were fixed on his with an intensity of pain, Till the ranch-dog from his kennel at the postern gate came round, And going into session strove to magnify the sound. He lifted up his spirit till the gloaming rang and rang With the song that to _his_ darling he impetuously sang! Then that musing youth, recalling all his soul from other scenes, Where his fathers all were Dudes and his mothers all Dudines, From his lips removed the beaker and politely, o'er the grog, Said: "Miss Larkin, please be quiet: you will interrupt the dog."
IN HIGH LIFE.