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-fulclass="underline" 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 brawclass="underline" 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!"