So, waking from my last long sleep,
I took my place among the sheep.
I passed the gate—Saint Peter eyed
Me sharply as I stepped inside.
He thought, as afterward I learned,
That I was Chris, the Unreturned.
The new Jerusalem—ah me,
It was a sorry sight to see!
The mansions of the blest were there,
And mostly they were fine and fair;
But O, such streets!—so deep and wide,
And all unpaved, from side to side!
And in a public square there grew
A blighted tree, most sad to view.
From off its trunk the bark was ripped—
Its very branches all were stripped!
An angel perched upon the fence
With all the grace of indolence.
"Celestial bird," I cried, in pain,
"What vandal wrought this wreck? Explain."
He raised his eyelids as if tired:
"What is a Vandal?" he inquired.
"This is the Tree of Life. 'Twas stripped
By Durst and Siebe, who have shipped
"The bark across the Jordan—see?—
And sold it to a tannery."
"Alas," I sighed, "their old-time tricks!
That pavement, too, of golden bricks—
"They've gobbled that?" But with a scowl,
"You greatly wrong them," said the fowl:
"'Twas Gilleran did that, I fear—
Head of the Street Department here."
"What! what!" cried I—"you let such chaps
Come here? You've Satan, too, perhaps."
"We had him, yes, but off he went,
Yet showed some purpose to repent;
"But since your priests and parsons filled
The place with those their preaching killed"—
(Here Siebe passed along with Durst,
Psalming as if their lungs would burst)—
"He swears his foot no more shall press
('Tis cloven, anyhow, I guess)
"Our soil. In short, he's out on strike—
But devils are not all alike."
Lo! Gilleran came down the street,
Pressing the soil with broad, flat feet!
NIMROD
There were brave men, some one has truly said,
Before Atrides (those were mostly dead
Behind him) and ere you could e'er occur
Actaeon lived, Nimrod and Bahram-Gur.
In strength and speed and daring they excelled:
The stag they overtook, the lion felled.
Ah, yes, great hunters flourished before you,
And—for Munchausen lived—great talkers too.
There'll be no more; there's much to kill, but—well,
You have left nothing in the world to tell!
CENSOR LITERARUM
So, Parson Stebbins, you've released your chin
To say that here, and here, we press-folk ail.
'Tis a great thing an editor to skin
And hang his faulty pelt upon a nail
(If over-eared, it has, at least, no tail)
And, for an admonition against sin,
Point out its maculations with a rod,
And act, in short, the gentleman of God.
'Twere needless cruelty to spoil your sport
By comment, critical or merely rude;
But you, too, have, according to report,
Despite your posing as a holy dude,
Imperfect spiritual pulchritude
For so severe a judge. May't please the court,
We shall appeal and take our case at once
Before that higher court, a taller dunce.
Sir, what were you without the press? What spreads
The fame of your existence, once a week,
From the Pacific Mail dock to the Heads,
Warning the people you're about to wreak
Upon the human ear your Sunday freak?—
Whereat the most betake them to their bed
Though some prefer to slumber in the pews
And nod assent to your hypnotic views.
Unhappy man! can you not still your tongue
When (like a luckless brat afflict with worms,
By cruel fleas intolerably stung,
Or with a pang in its small lap) it squirms?
Still must it vulgarize your feats of lung?
No preaching better were, the sun beneath,
If you had nothing there behind your teeth.
BORROWED BRAINS
Writer folk across the bay
Take the pains to see and say—
All their upward palms in air:
Hasten, hasten, writer folk—
In the gutters rake and poke,
If by God's exceeding grace
You may hit upon the place
Where the barber threw at length
Samson's literary strength.
Find it, find it if you can;
Happy the successful man!
He has but to put one strand
In his beaver's inner band
And his intellect will soar
As it never did before!
While an inch of it remains
He will noted be for brains,
And at last ('twill so befall)
Fit to cease to write at all.
THE FYGHTYNGE SEVENTH
It is the gallant Seventh—
It fyghteth faste and free!
God wot the where it fyghteth
I ne desyre to be.
The Gonfalon it flyeth,
Seeming a Flayme in Sky;
The Bugel loud yblowen is,
Which sayeth, Doe and dye!
And (O good Saints defende us
Agaynst the Woes of Warr)
Drawn Tongues are flashing deadly
To smyte the Foeman sore!
With divers kinds of Riddance
The smoaking Earth is wet,
And all aflowe to seaward goe
The Torrents wide of Sweat!
The Thunder of the Captens,
And eke the Shouting, mayketh
Such horrid Din the Soule within
The boddy of me quayketh!
Who fyghteth the bold Seventh?
What haughty Power defyes?
Their Colonel 'tis they drubben sore,
And dammen too his Eyes!
INDICTED
Dear Bruner, once we had a little talk
(That is to say, 'twas I did all the talking)
About the manner of your moral walk:
How devious the trail you made in stalking,
On level ground, your law-protected game—
"Another's Dollar" is, I think, its name.
Your crooked course more recently is not
So blamable; for, truly, you have stumbled
On evil days; and 'tis your luckless lot
To traverse spaces (with a spirit humbled,
Contrite, dejected and divinely sad)
Where, 'tis confessed, the walking's rather bad.
Jordan, the song says, is a road (I thought
It was a river) that is hard to travel;
And Dublin, if you'd find it, must be sought
Along a highway with more rocks than gravel.
In difficulty neither can compete
With that wherein you navigate your feet.
As once George Gorham said of Pixley, so
I say of you: "The prison yawns before you,
The turnkey stalks behind!" Now will you go?
Or lag, and let that functionary floor you?
To change the metaphor—you seem to be
Between Judge Wallace and the deep, deep sea!
OVER THE BORDER
O, justice, you have fled, to dwell
In Mexico, unstrangled,
Lest you should hang as h
igh as—well,
As Haman dangled.
(I know not if his cord he twanged,
Or the King proved forgiving.
'Tis hard to think of Haman hanged,
And Haymond living.)
Yes, as I said: in mortal fear
To Mexico you journeyed;
For you were on your trial here,
And ill attorneyed.
The Law had long regarded you
As an extreme offender.
Religion looked upon you, too,
With thoughts untender.
The Press to you was cold as snow,
For sin you'd always call so.
In Politics you were de trop,
In Morals also.
All this is accurately true
And, faith! there might be more said;
But—well, to save your thrapple you
Fled, as aforesaid.
You're down in Mexico—that's plain
As that the sun is risen;
For Daniel Burns, down there, his chain
Drags round in prison.
ONE JUDGE
Wallace, created on a noble plan
To show us that a Judge can be a Man;
Through moral mire exhaling mortal stench
God-guided sweet and foot-clean to the Bench;
In salutation here and sign I lift
A hand as free as yours from lawless thrift,
A heart—ah, would I truly could proclaim
My bosom lighted with so pure a flame!
Alas, not love of justice moves my pen
To praise, or to condemn, my fellow men.
Good will and ill its busy point incite:
I do but gratify them when I write.
In palliation, though, I'd humbly state,
I love the righteous and the wicked hate.
So, sir, although we differ we agree,
Our work alike from persecution free,
And Heaven, approving you, consents to me.
Take, therefore, from this not all useless hand
The crown of honor—not in all the land
One honest man dissenting from the choice,
Nor in approval one Fred. Crocker's voice!
TO AN INSOLENT ATTORNEY
So, Hall McAllister, you'll not be warned—
My protest slighted, admonition scorned!
To save your scoundrel client from a cell
As loth to swallow him as he to swell
Its sum of meals insurgent (it decries
All wars intestinal with meats that rise)
You turn your scurril tongue against the press
And damn the agency you ought to bless.
Had not the press with all its hundred eyes
Discerned the wolf beneath the sheep's disguise
And raised the cry upon him, he to-day
Would lack your company, and you would lack his pay.
Talk not of "hire" and consciences for sale—
You whose profession 'tis to threaten, rail,
Calumniate and libel at the will
Of any villain who can pay the bill—
You whose most honest dollars all were got
By saying for a fee "the thing that's not!"
To you 'tis one, to challenge or defend;
Clients are means, their money is an end.
In my profession sometimes, as in yours
Always, a payment large enough secures
A mercenary service to defend
The guilty or the innocent to rend.
But mark the difference, nor think it slight:
We do not hold it proper, just and right;
Of selfish lies a little still we shame
And give our villainies another name.
Hypocrisy's an ugly vice, no doubt,
But blushing sinners can't get on without.
Happy the lawyer!—at his favored hands
Nor truth nor decency the world demands.
Secure in his immunity from shame,
His cheek ne'er kindles with the tell-tale flame.
His brains for sale, morality for hire,
In every land and century a licensed liar!
No doubt, McAllister, you can explain
How honorable 'tis to lie for gain,
Provided only that the jury's made
To understand that lying is your trade.
A hundred thousand volumes, broad and flat,
(The Bible not included) proving that,
Have been put forth, though still the doubt remains
If God has read them with befitting pains.
No Morrow could get justice, you'll declare,
If none who knew him foul affirmed him fair.
Ingenious man! how easy 'tis to raise
An argument to justify the course that pays!
I grant you, if you like, that men may need
The services performed for crime by greed,—
Grant that the perfect welfare of the State
Requires the aid of those who in debate
As mercenaries lost in early youth
The fine distinction between lie and truth—
Who cheat in argument and set a snare
To take the feet of Justice unaware—
Who serve with livelier zeal when rogues assist
With perjury, embracery (the list
Is long to quote) than when an honest soul,
Scorning to plot, conspire, intrigue, cajole,
Reminds them (their astonishment how great!)
He'd rather suffer wrong than perpetrate.
I grant, in short, 'tis better all around
That ambidextrous consciences abound
In courts of law to do the dirty work
That self-respecting scavengers would shirk.
What then? Who serves however clean a plan
By doing dirty work, he is a dirty man!
ACCEPTED
Charles Shortridge once to St. Peter came.
"Down!" cried the saint with his face aflame;
"'Tis writ that every hardy liar
Shall dwell forever and ever in fire!"
"That's what I said the night that I died,"
The sinner, turning away, replied.
"What! you said that?" cried the saint—"what! what!
You said 'twas so writ? Then, faith, 'tis not!
I'm a devil at quoting, but I begin
To fail in my memory. Pray walk in."
A PROMISED FAST TRAIN
I turned my eyes upon the Future's scroll
And saw its pictured prophecies unroll.
I saw that magical life-laden train
Flash its long glories o'er Nebraska's plain.
I saw it smoothly up the mountain glide.
"O happy, happy passengers!" I cried.
For Pleasure, singing, drowned the engine's roar,
And Hope on joyous pinions flew before.
Then dived the train adown the sunset slope—
Pleasure was silent and unseen was Hope.
Crashes and shrieks attested the decay
That greed had wrought upon that iron way.
The rusted rails broke down the rotting ties,
And clouds of flying spikes obscured the skies.
My coward eyes I drew away, distressed,
And fixed them on the terminus to-West,
Where soon, its melancholy tale to tell,
One bloody car-wheel wabbled in and fell!
ONE OF THE SAINTS
Big Smith is an Oakland School Board man,
And he looks as good as ever he can;
And he's such a cold and a chaste Big Smith
That snowflakes all are his kin and kith.
Wherever his eye he chances to throw
The crystals of ice begin to grow;
And the fruits and flowers he sees are lost
By the singeing touch of a sudden frost.
The women all shiver whenever he's near
,
And look upon us with a look austere—
Effect of the Smithian atmosphere.
Such, in a word, is the moral plan
Of the Big, Big Smith, the School Board man.
When told that Madame Ferrier had taught
Hernani in school, his fist he brought
Like a trip-hammer down on his bulbous knee,
And he roared: "Her Nanny? By gum, we'll see
If the public's time she dares devote
To the educatin' of any dam goat!"
"You do not entirely comprehend—
Hernani's a play," said his learned friend,
"By Victor Hugo—immoral and bad.
What's worse, it's French!" "Well, well, my lad,"
Said Smith, "if he cuts a swath so wide
I'll have him took re'glar up and tried!"
And he smiled so sweetly the other chap
Thought that himself was a Finn or Lapp
Caught in a storm of his native snows,
With a purple ear and an azure nose.
The Smith continued: "I never pursue
Immoral readin'." And that is true:
He's a saint of remarkably high degree,
With a mind as chaste as a mind can be;
But read!—the devil a word can he!
A MILITARY INCIDENT
Dawn heralded the coming sun—
Fort Douglas was computing
The minutes—and the sunrise gun
Was manned for his saluting.
The gunner at that firearm stood,
The which he slowly loaded,
When, bang!—I know not how it could,
But sure the charge exploded!
Yes, to that veteran's surprise
The gun went off sublimely,
And both his busy arms likewise
Went off with it, untimely.
Then said that gunner to his mate
(He was from Ballyshannon):
"Bedad, the sun's a minute late,
Accardin' to this cannon!"
SUBSTANCE VERSUS SHADOW
So, gentle critics, you would have me tilt,
Not at the guilty, only just at Guilt!—
Spare the offender and condemn Offense,
And make life miserable to Pretense!
"Whip Vice and Folly—that is satire's use—
But be not personal, for that's abuse;