Shapes of Clay

  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.

  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."

  Sir Impycu Lackland, from over the sea,
  Has led to the altar Miss Bloatie Bondee.
  The wedding took place at the Church of St. Blare;
  The fashion, the rank and the wealth were all there—
  No person was absent of all whom one meets.
  Lord Mammon himself bowed them into their seats,
  While good Sir John Satan attended the door
  And Sexton Beelzebub managed the floor,
  Respectfully keeping each dog to its rug,
  Preserving the peace between poodle and pug.
  Twelve bridesmaids escorted the bride up the aisle
  To blush in her blush and to smile in her smile;
  Twelve groomsmen supported the eminent groom
  To scowl in his scowl and to gloom in his gloom.
  The rites were performed by the hand and the lip
  Of his Grace the Diocesan, Billingham Pip,
  Assisted by three able-bodied divines.
  He prayed and they grunted, he read, they made signs.
  Such fashion, such beauty, such dressing, such grace
  Were ne'er before seen in that heavenly place!
  That night, full of gin, and all blazing inside,
  Sir Impycu blackened the eyes of his bride.

  Mrs. Mehitable Marcia Moore
    Was a dame of superior mind,
  With a gown which, modestly fitting before,
    Was greatly puffed up behind.

  The bustle she wore was ingeniously planned
    With an inspiration bright:
  It magnified seven diameters and
    Was remarkably nice and light.

  It was made of rubber and edged with lace
    And riveted all with brass,
  And the whole immense interior space
    Inflated with hydrogen gas.

  The ladies all said when she hove in view
    Like the round and rising moon:
  "She's a stuck up thing!" which was partly true,
    And men called her the Captive Balloon.

  To Manhattan Beach for a bath one day
    She went and she said: "O dear!
  If I leave off this what will people say?
    I shall look so uncommonly queer!"

  So a costume she had accordingly made
    To take it all nicely in,
  And when she appeared in that suit arrayed,
    She was greeted with many a grin.

  Proudly and happily looking around,
    She waded out into the wet,
  But the water was very, very profound,
    And her feet and her forehead met!

  As her bubble drifted away from the shore,
    On the glassy billows borne,
  All cried: "Why, where is Mehitable Moore?
  I saw her go in, I'll be sworn!"

  Then the bulb it swelled as the sun grew hot,
    Till it burst with a sullen roar,
  And the sea like oil closed over the spot—
    Farewell, O Mehitable Moore!

  Nightly I put up this humble petition:
    "Forgive me, O Father of Glories,
  My sins of commission, my sins of omission,
    My sins of the Mission Dolores."

  Did I believe the angels soon would call
    You, my beloved, to the other shore,
    And I should never see you any more,
  I love you so I know that I should fall
  Into dejection utterly, and all
    Love's pretty pageantry, wherein we bore
    Twin banners bravely in the tumult's fore,
  Would seem as shadows idling on a wall.
  So daintily I love you that my love
    Endures no rumor of the winter's breath,
      And only blossoms for it thinks the sky
  Forever gracious, and the stars above
    Forever friendly. Even the fear of death
      Were frost wherein its roses all would die.

  They were two deaf mutes, and they loved and they
    Resolved to be groom and bride;
  And they listened to nothing that any could say,
    Nor ever a word replied.

  From wedlock when warned by the married men,
    Maintain an invincible mind:
  Be deaf and dumb until wedded—and then
    Be deaf and dumb and blind.

  A spitcat sate on a garden gate
    And a snapdog fared beneath;
  Careless and free was his mien, and he
    Held a fiddle-string in his teeth.

  She marked his march, she wrought an arch
    Of her back and blew up her tail;
  And her eyes were green as ever were seen,
    And she uttered a woful wail.

  The spitcat's plaint was as follows: "It ain't
    That I am to music a foe;
  For fiddle-strings bide in my own inside,
    And I twang them soft and low.

  "But that dog has trifled with art and rifled
    A kitten of mine, ah me!
  That catgut slim was marauded from him:
    'Tis the string that men call E."

  Then she sounded high, in the key of Y,
    A note that cracked the tombs;
  And the missiles through the firmament flew
    From adjacent sleeping-rooms.

  As her gruesome yell from the gate-post fell
    She followed it down to earth;
  And that snapdog wears a placard that bears
    The inscription: "Blind from birth."

  When Adam first saw Eve he said:
  "O lovely creature, share my bed."
  Before consenting, she her gaze
  Fixed on the greensward to appraise,
  As well as vision could avouch,
  The value of the proffered couch.
  And seeing that the grass was green
  And neatly clipped with a machine—
  Observing that the flow'rs were rare
  Varieties, and some were fair,
  The posts of precious woods, besprent
  With fragrant balsams, diffluent,
  And all things suited to her worth,
  She raised her angel eyes from earth
  To his and, blushing to confess,
  Murmured: "I love you, Adam—yes."
  Since then her daughters, it is said,
  Look always down when asked to wed.

    Och! Father McGlynn,
    Ye appear to be in
  Fer a bit of a bout wid the Pope;
    An' there's divil a doubt
    But he's knockin' ye out
  While ye're hangin' onto the rope.

    An' soon ye'll lave home
    To thravel to Rome,
  For its bound to Canossa ye are.
    Persistin' to shtay
    When ye're ordered away—
  Bedad! that is goin' too far!

  Lord of the tempest, pray refrain
  From leveling this church again.
  Now in its doom, as so you've willed it,
  We acquiesce. But you'll rebuild it.

    "Lothario is very low,"
    So all the doctors tell.
  Nay, nay, not so—he will be, though,
    If ever he get well.

  When, with the force of a ram that discharges its ponderous body
  Straight at the rear elevation of the luckless culler of simples,
  The foot of Herculean Kilgore—statesman of surname suggestive
  Or carnage unspeakable!—lit like a missile prodigious
  Upon the Congressional door with a monstrous and mighty momentum,
  Causing that vain ineffective bar to political freedom
  To fly from its hinges, effacing the nasal excrescence of Dingley,
  That luckless one, decently veiling the ruin with ready bandanna,
  Lamented the loss of his eminence, sadly with sobs as follows:
  "Ah, why was I ever elected to the halls of legislation,
  So soon to be shown the door with pitiless emphasis? Truly,
  I've leaned on a broken Reed, and the same has gone back on me meanly.
  Where now is my prominence, erstwhile in council conspicuous, patent?
  Alas, I did never before understand what I now see clearly,
  To wit, that Democracy tends to level all human distinctions!"
  His fate so untoward and sad the Pine-tree statesman, bewailing,
  Stood in the corridor there while Democrats freed from confinement
  Came trooping forth from the chamber, dissembling all, as they passed him,
  Hilarious sentiments painful indeed to observe, and remarking:
  "O friend and colleague of the Speaker, what ails the unjoyous proboscis?"

  What, madam, run for School Director? You?
    And want my vote and influence? Well, well,
  That beats me! Gad! where are we drifting to?
    In all my life I never have heard tell
    Of such sublime presumption, and I smell
  A nigger in the fence! Excuse me, madam;
  We statesmen sometimes speak like the old Adam.

  But now you mention it—well, well, who knows?
    We might, that's certain, give the sex a show.
  I have a cousin—teacher. I suppose
    If I stand in and you 're elected—no?
    You'll make no bargains? That's a pretty go!
  But understand that school administration
  Belongs to Politics, not Education.

  We'll pass the teacher deal; but it were wise
    To understand each other at the start.
  You know my business—books and school supplies;
    You'd hardly, if elected, have the heart
    Some small advantage to deny me—part
  Of all my profits to be yours. What? Stealing?
  Please don't express yourself with so much feeling.

  You pain me, truly. Now one question more.
    Suppose a fair young man should ask a place
  As teacher—would you (pardon) shut the door
    Of the Department in his handsome face
    Until—I know not how to put the case—
  Would you extort a kiss to pay your favor?
  Good Lord! you laugh? I thought the matter graver.

  Well, well, we can't do business, I suspect:
    A woman has no head for useful tricks.
  My profitable offers you reject
    And will not promise anything to fix
    The opposition. That's not politics.
  Good morning. Stay—I'm chaffing you, conceitedly.
  Madam, I mean to vote for you—repeatedly.

  What! you a Senator—you, Mike de Young?
  Still reeking of the gutter whence you sprung?
  Sir, if all Senators were such as you,
  Their hands so crimson and so slender, too,—
  (Shaped to the pocket for commercial work,
  For literary, fitted to the dirk)—
  So black their hearts, so lily-white their livers,
  The toga's touch would give a man the shivers.

  Down in Southern Arizona where the Gila monster thrives,
  And the "Mescalero," gifted with a hundred thousand lives,
  Every hour renounces one of them by drinking liquid flame—
  The assassinating wassail that has given him his name;
  Where the enterprising dealer in Caucasian hair is seen
  To hold his harvest festival upon his village-green,
  While the late lamented tenderfoot upon the plain is spread
  With a sanguinary circle on the summit of his head;
  Where the cactuses (or cacti) lift their lances in the sun,
  And incautious jackass-rabbits come to sorrow as they run,
  Lived a colony of settlers—old Missouri was the State
  Where they formerly resided at a prehistoric date.

  Now, the spot that had been chosen for this colonizing scheme
  Was as waterless, believe me, as an Arizona stream.

  The soil was naught but ashes, by the breezes driven free,
  And an acre and a quarter were required to sprout a pea.
  So agriculture languished,  for the land would not produce,
  And for lack of water, whisky was the beverage in use—
  Costly whisky, hauled in wagons many a weary, weary day,
  Mostly needed by the drivers to sustain them on their way.
  Wicked whisky! King of Evils! Why, O, why did God create
  Such a curse and thrust it on us in our inoffensive state?

  Once a parson came among them, and a holy man was he;
  With his ailing stomach whisky wouldn't anywise agree;
  So he knelt upon the mesa and he prayed with all his chin
  That the Lord would send them water or incline their hearts to gin.

  Scarcely was the prayer concluded ere an earthquake shook the land,
  And with copious effusion springs burst out on every hand!
  Merrily the waters gurgled, and the shock which gave them birth
  Fitly was by some declared a temperance movement of the earth.
  Astounded by the miracle, the people met that night
  To celebrate it properly by some religious rite;
  And 'tis truthfully recorded that before the moon had sunk
  Every man and every woman was devotionally drunk.
  A half a standard gallon (says history) per head
  Of the best Kentucky prime was at that ceremony shed.
  O, the glory of that country! O, the happy, happy folk.
  By the might of prayer delivered from Nature's broken yoke!
  Lo! the plains to the horizon all are yellowing with rye,
  And the corn upon the hill-top lifts its banners to the sky!
  Gone the wagons, gone the drivers, and the road is grown to grass,
  Over which the incalescent Bourbon did aforetime pass.
  Pikeville (that's the name they've given, in their wild, romantic way,
  To that irrigation district) now distills, statistics say,
  Something like a hundred gallons, out of each recurrent crop,
  To the head of population—and consumes it, every drop!

  I saw the devil—he was working free:
  A customs-house he builded by the sea.
  "Why do you this?" The devil raised his head;
  "Churches and courts I've built enough," he said.

  Upon my desk a single spray,
    With starry blossoms fraught.
  I write in many an idle way,
    Thinking one serious thought.

  "O flowers, a fine Greek name ye bear,
    And with a fine Greek grace."
  Be still, O heart, that turns to share
    The sunshine of a face.

  "Have ye no messages—no brief,
    Still sign: 'Despair', or 'Hope'?"
  A sudden stir of stem and leaf—
    A breath of heliotrope!

  Come in, old gentleman. How do you do?
    Delighted, I'm sure, that you've called.
  I'm a sociable sort of a chap and you
  Are a pleasant-appearing person, too,
    With a head agreeably bald.
  That's right—sit down in the scuttle of coal
    And put up your feet in a chair.
    It is better to have them there:
  And I've always said that a hat of lead,
    Such as I see you wear,
  Was a better hat than a hat of glass.
  And your boots of brass
    Are a natural kind of boots, I swear.
    "May you blow your nose on a paper of pins?"
        Why, certainly, man, why not?
    I rather expected you'd do it before,
    When I saw you poking it in at the door.
        It's dev'lish hot—
  The weather, I mean. "You are twins"?
  Why, that was evident at the start,
    From the way that you paint your head
  In stripes of purple and red,
      With dots of yellow.
      That proves you a fellow
  With a love of legitimate art.
  "You've bitten a snake and are feeling bad"?
      That's very sad,
  But Longfellow's words I beg to recall:
  Your lot is the common lot of all.
  "Horses are trees and the moon is a sneeze"?
  That, I fancy, is just as you please.
  Some think that way and others hold
      The opposite view;
      I never quite knew,
      For the matter o' that,
  When everything's been said—
      May I offer this mat
  If you will stand on your head?
  I suppose I look to be upside down
    From your present point of view.
  It's a giddy old world, from king to clown,
    And a topsy-turvy, too.
  But, worthy and now uninverted old man,
  You're built, at least, on a normal plan
      If ever a truth I spoke.
          Smoke?
      Your air and conversation
      Are a liberal education,
  And your clothes, including the metal hat
    And the brazen boots—what's that?

    "You never could stomach a Democrat
    Since General Jackson ran?
  You're another sort, but you predict
    That your party'll get consummately licked?"
    Good God! what a queer old man!

  A Countess (so they tell the tale)
  Who dwelt of old in Arno's vale,
  Where ladies, even of high degree,
  Know more of love than of A.B.C,
  Came once with a prodigious bribe
  Unto the learned village scribe,
  That most discreet and honest man
  Who wrote for all the lover clan,
  Nor e'er a secret had betrayed—
  Save when inadequately paid.
  "Write me," she sobbed—"I pray thee do—
  A book about the Prince di Giu—
  A book of poetry in praise
  Of all his works and all his ways;
  The godlike grace of his address,
  His more than woman's tenderness,
  His courage stern and lack of guile,
  The loves that wantoned in his smile.
  So great he was, so rich and kind,
  I'll not within a fortnight find
  His equal as a lover. O,
  My God! I shall be drowned in woe!"

  "What! Prince di Giu has died!" exclaimed
  The honest man for letters famed,
  The while he pocketed her gold;
  "Of what'?—if I may be so bold."
  Fresh storms of tears the lady shed:
  "I stabbed him fifty times," she said.

  A famous conqueror, in battle brave,
  Who robbed the cradle to supply the grave.
  His reign laid quantities of human dust:
  He fell upon the just and the unjust.

  What! imitate me, friend? Suppose that you
  With agony and difficulty do
  What I do easily—what then? You've got
  A style I heartily wish I had not.
  If I from lack of sense and you from choice
  Grieve the judicious and the unwise rejoice,
  No equal censure our deserts will suit—
  We both are fools, but you're an ape to boot!

    "By good men's prayers see Grant restored!"
    Shouts Talmage, pious creature!
  Yes, God, by supplication bored
    From every droning preacher,
  Exclaimed: "So be it, tiresome crew—
  But I've a crow to pick with you."

  He looked upon the ships as they
    All idly lay at anchor,
  Their sides with gorgeous workmen gay—
    The riveter and planker—

  Republicans and Democrats,
    Statesmen and politicians.
  He saw the swarm of prudent rats
    Swimming for land positions.

  He marked each "belted cruiser" fine,
    Her poddy life-belts floating
  In tether where the hungry brine
    Impinged upon her coating.

  He noted with a proud regard,
    As any of his class would,
  The poplar mast and poplar yard
    Above the hull of bass-wood.

  He saw the Eastlake frigate tall,
    With quaintly carven gable,
  Hip-roof and dormer-window—all
    With ivy formidable.

  In short, he saw our country's hope
    In best of all conditions—
  Equipped, to the last spar and rope,
    By working politicians.

  He boarded then the noblest ship
    And from the harbor glided.
  "Adieu, adieu!" fell from his lip.
    Verdict: "He suicided."

  1881.

  In Congress once great Mowther shone,
    Debating weighty matters;
  Now into an asylum thrown,
    He vacuously chatters.

  If in that legislative hall
    His wisdom still he 'd vented,
  It never had been known at all
    That Mowther was demented.

  Ben Bulger was a silver man,
    Though not a mine had he:
  He thought it were a noble plan
    To make the coinage free.

  "There hain't for years been sech a time,"
    Said Ben to his bull pup,
  "For biz—the country's broke and I'm
    The hardest kind of up.

  "The paper says that that's because
    The silver coins is sea'ce,
  And that the chaps which makes the laws
    Puts gold ones in their place.

  "They says them nations always be
    Most prosperatin' where
  The wolume of the currency
    Ain't so disgustin' rare."

  His dog, which hadn't breakfasted,
    Dissented from his view,
  And wished that he could swell, instead,
    The volume of cold stew.

  "Nobody'd put me up," said Ben,
    "With patriot galoots
  Which benefits their feller men
    By playin' warious roots;

  "But havin' all the tools about,
    I'm goin' to commence
  A-turnin' silver dollars out
    Wuth eighty-seven cents.

  "The feller takin' 'em can't whine:
    (No more, likewise, can I):
  They're better than the genooine,
    Which mostly satisfy.

  "It's only makin' coinage free,
    And mebby might augment
  The wolume of the currency
    A noomerous per cent."

  I don't quite see his error nor
    Malevolence prepense,
  But fifteen years they gave him for
    That technical offense.

  He lay on his bed and solemnly "signed,"
    Gasping—perhaps 'twas a jest he meant:
  "This of a sound and disposing mind
    Is the last ill-will and contestament."

  To bucks and ewes by the Good Shepherd fed
  The Priest delivers masses for the dead,
  And even from estrays outside the fold
  Death for the masses he would not withhold.
  The Parson, loth alike to free or kill,
  Forsakes the souls already on the grill,
  And, God's prerogative of mercy shamming,
  Spares living sinners for a harder damning.

  Observe, dear Lord, what lively pranks
  Are played by sentimental cranks!
  First this one mounts his hinder hoofs
  And brays the chimneys off the roofs;
  Then that one, with exalted voice,
  Expounds the thesis of his choice,
  Our understandings to bombard,
  Till all the window panes are starred!
  A third augments the vocal shock
  Till steeples to their bases rock,
  Confessing, as they humbly nod,
  They hear and mark the will of God.
  A fourth in oral thunder vents
  His awful penury of sense
  Till dogs with sympathetic howls,
  And lowing cows, and cackling fowls,
  Hens, geese, and all domestic birds,
  Attest the wisdom of his words.
  Cranks thus their intellects deflate
  Of theories about the State.
  This one avers 'tis built on Truth,
  And that on Temperance. This youth
  Declares that Science bears the pile;
  That graybeard, with a holy smile,
  Says Faith is the supporting stone;
  While women swear that Love alone
  Could so unflinchingly endure
  The heavy load. And some are sure
  The solemn vow of Christian Wedlock
  Is the indubitable bedrock.

  Physicians once about the bed
  Of one whose life was nearly sped
  Blew up a disputatious breeze
  About the cause of his disease:
  This, that and t' other thing they blamed.
  "Tut, tut!" the dying man exclaimed,
  "What made me ill I do not care;
  You've not an ounce of it, I'll swear.
  And if you had the skill to make it
  I'd see you hanged before I'd take it!"

  Must you, Carnegie, evermore explain
  Your worth, and all the reasons give again
  Why black and red are similarly white,
  And you and God identically right?
  Still must our ears without redress submit
  To hear you play the solemn hypocrite
  Walking in spirit some high moral level,
  Raising at once his eye-balls and the devil?
  Great King of Cant! if Nature had but made
  Your mouth without a tongue I ne'er had prayed
  To have an earless head. Since she did not,
  Bear me, ye whirlwinds, to some favored spot—
  Some mountain pinnacle that sleeps in air
  So delicately, mercifully rare
  That when the fellow climbs that giddy hill,
  As, for my sins, I know at last he will,
  To utter twaddle in that void inane
  His soundless organ he will play in vain.

  On Evidence, on Deeds, on Bills,
  On Copyhold, on Loans, on Wills,
    Lawyers great books indite;
  The creaking of their busy quills
    I've never heard on Right.

  Unhappy State! with horrors still to strive:
  Thy Hugo dead, thy Boulanger alive;
  A Prince who'd govern where he dares not dwell,
  And who for power would his birthright sell—
  Who, anxious o'er his enemies to reign,
  Grabs at the scepter and conceals the chain;
  While pugnant factions mutually strive
  By cutting throats to keep the land alive.
  Perverse in passion, as in pride perverse—
  To all a mistress, to thyself a curse;
  Sweetheart of Europe! every sun's embrace
  Matures the charm and poison of thy grace.
  Yet time to thee nor peace nor wisdom brings:
  In blood of citizens and blood of kings
  The stones of thy stability are set,
  And the fair fabric trembles at a threat.

  Looking across the line, the Grecian said:
  "This border I will stain a Turkey red."
  The Moslem smiled securely and replied:
  "No Greek has ever for his country dyed."
  While thus each patriot guarded his frontier,
  The Powers stole all the country in his rear.

  Death, are you well? I trust you have no cough
    That's painful or in any way annoying—
  No kidney trouble that may carry you off,
    Or heart disease to keep you from enjoying
  Your meals—and ours. 'T were very sad indeed
  To have to quit the busy life you lead.

  You've been quite active lately for so old
    A person, and not very strong-appearing.
  I'm apprehensive, somehow, that my bold,
    Bad brother gave you trouble in the spearing.
  And my two friends—I fear, sir, that you ran
  Quite hard for them, especially the man.

  I crave your pardon: 'twas no fault of mine;
    If you are overworked I'm sorry, very.
  Come in, old man, and have a glass of wine.
    What shall it be—Marsala, Port or Sherry?
  What! just a mug of blood? That's funny grog
  To ask a friend for, eh? Well, take it, hog!

  Dom Pedro, Emperor of far Brazil
    (Whence coffee comes and the three-cornered nut),
  They say that you're imperially ill,
    And threatened with paralysis. Tut-tut!
    Though Emperors are mortal, nothing but
  A nimble thunderbolt could catch and kill
  A man predestined to depart this life
  By the assassin's bullet, bomb or knife.

  Sir, once there was a President who freed
    Ten million slaves; and once there was a Czar
  Who freed five times as many serfs. Sins breed
    The means of punishment, and tyrants are
    Hurled headlong out of the triumphal car
  If faster than the law allows they speed.
  Lincoln and Alexander struck a rut;
  You freed slaves too. Paralysis—tut-tut!

  1885.

  Courageous fool!—the peril's strength unknown.
  Courageous man!—so conscious of your own.

  Fly, heedless stranger, from this spot accurst,
  Where rests in Satan an offender first
  In point of greatness, as in point of time,
  Of new-school rascals who proclaim their crime.
  Skilled with a frank loquacity to blab
  The dark arcana of each mighty grab,
  And famed for lying from his early youth,
  He sinned secure behind a veil of truth.
  Some lock their lips upon their deeds; some write
  A damning record and conceal from sight;
  Some, with a lust of speaking, die to quell it.
  His way to keep a secret was to tell it.

  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.

  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!

  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 per cent, we're giving
  Of what we robbed him of when he was living.

  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.

  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.

  Here Ingalls, sorrowing, has laid
  The tools of his infernal trade—
  His pen and tongue. So sharp and rude
  They grew—so slack in gratitude,
  His hand was wounded as he wrote,
  And when he spoke he cut his throat.

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

  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.
  Pauper in thought but prodigal in speech,
  Nothing he knew excepting how to teach.
  But in default of something to impart
  He multiplied his words with all his heart:
  When least he had to say, instructive most—
  A clam in wisdom and in wit a ghost.

  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.