"I never yet exactly could determineJust how it is that the judicial ermineIs kept so safely from predacious vermin.""It is not so, my friend: though in a garret'Tis kept in camphor, and you often air it,The vermin will get into it and wear it."
Jack Doe met Dick Roe, whose wife he loved,And said: "I will get the best of him."So pulling a knife from his boot, he shovedIt up to the hilt in the breast of him.Then he moved that weapon forth and back,Enlarging the hole he had made with it,Till the smoking liver fell out, and JackMerrily, merrily played with it.Then he reached within and he seized the slackOf the lesser bowel, and, travelingHither and thither, looked idly backOn that small intestine, raveling.The wretched Richard, with many a grinLaid on with exceeding suavity,Curled up and died, and they ran John inAnd charged him with sins of gravity.The case was tried and a verdict found:The jury, with great humanity,Acquitted the prisoner on the groundOf extemporary insanity.
Of a person known as Peters I will humbly crave your leaveAn unusual adventure into narrative to weave—Mr. William Perry Peters, of the town of Muscatel,A public educator and an orator as well.Mr. Peters had a weakness which, 'tis painful to relate,Was a strong predisposition to the pleasures of debate.He would foster disputation wheresoever he might be;In polygonal contention none so happy was as he.'Twas observable, however, that the exercises ranInto monologue by Peters, that rhetorical young man.And the Muscatelian rustics who assisted at the show,By involuntary silence testified their overthrow—Mr. Peters, all unheedful of their silence and their grief,Still effacing every vestige of erroneous belief.O, he was a sore affliction to all heretics so boldAs to entertain opinions that he didn't care to hold.One day—'t was in pursuance of a pedagogic planFor the mental elevation of Uncultivated Man—Mr. Peters, to his pupils, in dismissing them, explainedThat the Friday evening following (unless, indeed, it rained)Would be signalized by holding in the schoolhouse a debateFree to all who their opinions might desire to ventilateOn the question, "Which is better, as a serviceable gift,Speech or hearing, from barbarity the human mind to lift?"The pupils told their fathers, who, forehanded always, metAt the barroom to discuss it every evening, dry or wet,They argued it and argued it and spat upon the stove,And the non-committal "barkeep" on their differences throve.And I state it as a maxim in a loosish kind of way:You'll have the more to back your word the less you have to say.Public interest was lively, but one Ebenezer FinkOf the Rancho del Jackrabbit, only seemed to sit and think.On the memorable evening all the men of MuscatelCame to listen to the logic and the eloquence as well—All but William Perry Peters, whose attendance there, I fear.Was to wreak his ready rhetoric upon the public ear,And prove (whichever side he took) that hearing wouldn't liftThe human mind as ably as the other, greater gift.The judges being chosen and the disputants enrolled,The question he proceededin extensoto unfold:"Resolved—The sense of hearing lifts the mind up out of reachOf the fogs of error better than the faculty of speech."This simple proposition he expounded, word by word,Until they best understood it who least perfectly had heard.Even the judges comprehended as he ventured to explain—The impact of a spit-ball admonishing in vain.Beginning at a period before Creation's morn,He had reached the bounds of tolerance and Adam yet unborn.As down the early centuries of pre-historic timeHe tracked important principles and quoted striking rhyme,And Whisky Bill, prosaic soul! proclaiming him a jay,Had risen and like an earthquake, "reeled unheededly away,"And a late lamented cat, when opportunity should serve,Was preparing to embark upon her parabolic curve,A noise arose outside—the door was opened with a bangAnd old Ebenezer Fink was heard ejaculating "G'lang!"Straight into that assembly gravely marched without a winkAn ancient ass—the property it was of Mr. Fink.Its ears depressed and beating time to its infestive tread,Silent through silence moved amain that stately quadruped!It stopped before the orator, and in the lamplight thrownUpon its tail they saw that member weighted with a stone.Then spake old Ebenezer: "Gents, I heern o' this debateOn w'ether v'ice or y'ears is best the mind to elevate.Now 'yer's a bird ken throw some light uponto that tough theme:He has 'em both, I'm free to say, oncommonly extreme.He wa'n't invited for to speak, but he will not refuse(If t'other gentleman ken wait) to exposay his views."Ere merriment or anger o'er amazement could prevail;He cut the string that held the stone on that canary's tail.Freed from the weight, that member made a gesture of delight,Then rose until its rigid length was horizontal quite.With lifted head and level ears along his withers laid,Jack sighed, refilled his lungs and then—to put it mildly—brayed!He brayed until the stones were stirred in circumjacent hills,And sleeping women rose and fled, in divers kinds of frills.'T is said that awful bugle-blast—to make the story brief—Wafted William Perry Peters through the window, like a leaf!Such is the tale. If anything additional occurred'Tis not set down, though, truly, I remember to have heardThat a gentleman named Peters, now residing at Soquel,A considerable distance from the town of Muscatel,Is opposed to education, and to rhetoric, as well.
Saponacea, wert thou not so fairI'd curse thee for thy multitude of sins—For sending home my clothes all full of pins—A shirt occasionally that's a snareAnd a delusion, got, the Lord knows where,The Lord knows why—a sock whose outs and insNone know, nor where it ends nor where begins,And fewer cuffs than ought to be my share.But when I mark thy lilies how they grow,And the red roses of thy ripening charms,I bless the lovelight in thy dark eyes dreaming.I'll never pay thee, but I'd gladly goInto the magic circle of thine arms,Supple and fragrant from repeated steaming.
One thousand years I slept beneath the sod,My sleep in 1901 beginning,Then, by the action of some scurvy godWho happened then to recollect my sinning,I was revived and given another inning.On breaking from my grave I saw a crowd—A formless multitude of men and women,Gathered about a ruin. Clamors loudI heard, and curses deep enough to swim in;And, pointing at me, one said: "Let's puthimin."Then each turned on me with an evil look,As in my ragged shroud I stood and shook."Nay, good Posterity," I cried, "forbear!If that's a jail I fain would be remainingOutside, for truly I should little careTo catch my death of cold. I'm just regainingThe life lost long ago by my disdainingTo take precautions against draughts like thoseThat, haply, penetrate that cracked and splittingOld structure." Then an aged wight aroseFrom a chair of state in which he had been sitting,And with preliminary coughing, spittingAnd wheezing, said: "'T is not a jail, we're sure,Whate'er it may have been when it was newer."'T was found two centuries ago, o'ergrownWith brush and ivy, all undoored, ungated;And in restoring it we found a stoneSet here and there in the dilapidatedAnd crumbling frieze, inscribed, in antiquatedBig characters, with certain uncouth names,Which we conclude were borne of old by awfulRapscallions guilty of all sinful games—Vagrants engaged in purposes unlawful,And orators less sensible than jawful.So each ten years we add to the long rowA name, the most unworthy that we know.""But why," I asked, "putmein?" He replied:"You look it"—and the judgment pained me greatly;Right gladly would I then and there have died,But that I'd risen from the grave so lately.But on examining that solemn, statelyOld ruin I remarked: "My friend, you err—The truth of this is just what I expected.This building in its time made quite a stir.I lived (was famous, too) when 't was erected.The names here first inscribed were much respected.This is the Hall of Fame, or I'm a stork,And this goat pasture once was called New York."
Alas for ambition's possessor!Alas for the famous and proud!The Isle of Manhattan's best dresserIs wearing a hand-me-down shroud.The world has forgotten his glory;The wagoner sings on his wain,And Chauncey Depew tells a story,And jackasses laugh in the lane.
No man can truthfully say that he would not like tobe President.—William C. Whitney.
Lo! the wild rabbit, happy in the prideOf qualities to meaner beasts denied,Surveys the ass with reverence and fear,Adoring his superior length of ear,And says: "No living creature, lean or fat,But wishes in his heart to be like That!"
Let slaves and subjects with unvaried psalmsBefore their sovereign execute salaams;The freeman scorns one idol to adore—Tom, Dick and Harry and himself are four.
The skies they were ashen and sober,The leaves they were crisped and sere,—" " " withering " "It was night in the lonesome OctoberOf my most immemorial year;It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,—" " down " " dark tarn " "In the misty mid region of Weir,—" " ghoul-haunted woodland " "
Little's the good to sit and grieveBecause the serpent tempted Eve.Better to wipe your eyes and takeA club and go out and kill a snake.What do you gain by cursing NickFor playing her such a scurvy trick?Better go out and some villain findWho serves the devil, and beat him blind.But if you prefer, as I suspect,To philosophize, why, then, reflect:If the cunning rascal upon the limbHadn't tempted her she'd have tempted him.
Alas, alas, for the tourist's guide!—He turned from the beaten trail aside,Wandered bewildered, lay down and died.O grim is the Irony of Fate:It switches the man of low estateAnd loosens the dogs upon the great.It lights the fireman to roast the cook;The fisherman squirms upon the hook,And the flirt is slain with a tender look.The undertaker it overtakes;It saddles the cavalier, and makesThe haughtiest butcher into steaks.Assist me, gods, to balk the decree!Nothing I'll do and nothing I'll be,In order that nothing be done to me.
Republicans think Jonas BimmA Democrat gone mad,And Democrats consider himRepublican and bad.The Tough reviles him as a DudeAnd gives it him right hot;The Dude condemns his crassitudeAnd calls himsans culottes.Derided as an AnglophileBy Anglophobes, forsooth,As Anglophobe he feels, the while,The Anglophilic tooth.The Churchman calls him Atheist;The Atheists, rough-shod,Have ridden o'er him long and hissed"The wretch believes in God!"The Saints whom clergymen we callWould kill him if they could;The Sinners (scientists and all)Complain that he is good.All men deplore the differenceBetween themselves and him,And all devise expedientsFor paining Jonas Bimm.I too, with wild demoniac glee,Would put out both his eyes;For Mr. Bimm appears to meInsufferably wise!
Beneath my window twilight madeFamiliar mysteries of shade.Faint voices from the darkening downWere calling vaguely to the town.Intent upon a low, far gleamThat burned upon the world's extreme,I sat, with short reprieve from grief,And turned the volume, leaf by leaf,Wherein a hand, long dead, had wroughtA million miracles of thought.My fingers carelessly unclungThe lettered pages, and amongThem wandered witless, nor divinedThe wealth in which, poor fools, they mined.The soul that should have led their questWas dreaming in the level west,Where a tall tower, stark and still,Uplifted on a distant hill,Stood lone and passionless to claimIts guardian star's returning flame.I know not how my dream was broke,But suddenly my spirit wokeFilled with a foolish fear to lookUpon the hand that clove the book,Significantly pointing; nextI bent attentive to the text,And read—and as I read grew old—The mindless words: "Poor Tom's a-cold!"Ah me! to what a subtle touchThe brimming cup resigns its clutchUpon the wine. Dear God, is 't writThat hearts their overburden bearOf bitterness though thou permitThe pranks of Chance, alurk in nooks,And striking coward blows from books,And dead hands reaching everywhere?
Come, gentlemen—your gold.Thanks: welcome to the show.To hear a story toldIn words you do not know.Now, great Salvini, riseAnd thunder through your tears,Aha! friends, let your eyesInterpret to your ears.Gods! 't is a goodly game.Observe his stride—how grand!When legs like his declaimWho can misunderstand?See how that arm goes round.It says, as plain as day:"I love," "The lost is found,""Well met, sir," or, "Away!"And mark the drawing downOf brows. How accurateThe language of that frown:Pain, gentlemen—or hate.Those of the critic tradeSwear it is all as clearAs if his tongue were madeTo fit an English ear.Hear that Italian phrase!Greek to your sense, 't is true;But shrug, expression, gaze—Well, they are Grecian too.But it is Art! God wotIts tongue to all is known.Faith! he to whom 't were notWould better hold his own.Shakespeare says act and wordMust match together true.From what you've seen and heard,How can you doubt they do?Enchanting drama! MarkThe crowd "from pit to dome",One box alone is dark—The prompter stays at home.Stupendous artist! YouAre lord of joy and woe:We thrill if you say "Boo,"And thrill if you say "Bo."
I lay in silence, dead. A woman cameAnd laid a rose upon my breast and said:"May God be merciful." She spoke my name,And added: "It is strange to think him dead."He loved me well enough, but 't was his wayTo speak it lightly." Then, beneath her breath:"Besides"—I knew what further she would say,But then a footfall broke my dream of death.To-day the words are mine. I lay the roseUpon her breast, and speak her name and deemIt strange indeed that she is dead. God knowsI had more pleasure in the other dream.
For Gladstone's portrait five thousand poundsWere paid, 't is said, to Sir John Millais.I cannot help thinking that such fine payTranscended reason's uttermost bounds.For it seems to me uncommonly queerThat a painted British stateman's priceExceeds the established value thriceOf a living statesman over here.
A is defrauded of his land by B,Who's driven from the premises by C.D buys the place with coin of plundered E."That A's an Anarchist!" says F to G.
When at your window radiant you've stoodI've sometimes thought—forgive me if I've erred—That some slight thought of me perhaps has stirredYour heart to beat less gently than it should.I know you beautiful; that you are goodI hope—or fear—I cannot choose the word,Nor rightly suit it to the thought. I've heardReason at love's dictation never could.Blindly to this dilemma so I grope,As one whose every pathway has a snare:If you are minded in the saintly fashionOf your pure face my passion's without hope;If not, alas! I equally despair,For what to me were hope without the passion?
Grief for an absent lover, husband, friend,Is barely felt before it comes to end:A score of early consolations serveTo modify its mouth's dejected curve.But woes of creditors when debtors fleeForever swell the separating sea.When standing on an alien shore you markThe steady course of some intrepid bark,How sweet to think a tear for you abides,Not all unuseful, in the wave she rides!—That sighs for you commingle in the galeBeneficently bellying her sail!
An "actors' cemetery"! SureThe devil never tiresOf planning places to procureThe sticks to feed his fires.
Another Irish landlord gone to grass,Slain by the bullets of the tenant class!Pray, good agrarians, what wrong requiresSuch foul redress? Between you and the squiresAll Ireland's parted with an even hand—For you have all the ire, they all the land.
God said: "Let there be Man," and from the clayAdam came forth and, thoughtful, walked away.The matrix whence his body was obtained,An empty, man-shaped cavity, remainedAll unregarded from that early timeTill in a recent storm it filled with slime.Now Satan, envying the Master's powerTo make the meat himself could but devour,Strolled to the place and, standing by the pool,Exerted all his will to make a fool.A miracle!—from out that ancient holeRose Morehouse, lacking nothing but a soul."To give him that I've not the power divine,"Said Satan, sadly, "but I'll lend him mine."He breathed it into him, a vapor black,And to this day has never got it back.
"'Let there be Liberty!' God said, and, lo!The red skies all were luminous. The glowStruck first Columbia's kindling mountain peaksOne hundred and eleven years ago!"So sang a patriot whom once I sawDescending Bunker's holy hill. With aweI noted that he shone with sacred light,Like Moses with the tables of the Law.One hundred and eleven years? O smallAnd paltry period compared with allThe tide of centuries that flowed and ebbedTo etch Yosemite's divided wall!Ah, Liberty, they sing you always youngWhose harps are in your adoration strung(Each swears you are his countrywoman, too,And speak no language but his mother tongue).And truly, lass, although with shout and hornMan has all-hailed you from creation's morn,I cannot think you old—I think, indeed,You are by twenty centuries unborn.1886.
The sullen church-bell's intermittent moan,The dirge's melancholy monotone,The measured march, the drooping flags, attestA great man's progress to his place of rest.Along broad avenues himself decreedTo serve his fellow men's disputed need—Past parks he raped away from robbers' thriftAnd gave to poverty, wherein to liftIts voice to curse the giver and the gift—Past noble structures that he reared for menTo meet in and revile him, tongue and pen,Draws the long retinue of death to showThe fit credentials of a proper woe."Boss" Shepherd, you are dead. Your hand no moreThrows largess to the mobs that ramp and roarFor blood of benefactors who disdainTheir purity of purpose to explain,Their righteous motive and their scorn of gain.Your period of dream—'twas but a breath—Is closed in the indifference of death.Sealed in your silences, to you alikeIf hands are lifted to applaud or strike.No more to your dull, inattentive earPraise of to-day than curse of yesteryear.From the same lips the honied phrases fallThat still are bitter from cascades of gall.We note the shame; you in your depth of darkThe red-writ testimony cannot markOn every honest cheek; your senses allLocked,incommunicado, in your pall,Know not who sit and blush, who stand and bawl."Seven Grecian cities claim great Homer dead,Through which the living Homer begged hisbread."So sang, as if the thought had been his own,An unknown bard, improving on a known."Neglected genius!"—that is sad indeed,But malice better would ignore than heed,And Shepherd's soul, we rightly may suspect,Prayed often for the mercy of neglectWhen hardly did he dare to leave his doorWithout a guard behind him and beforeTo save him from the gentlemen that nowIn cheap and easy reparation bowTheir corrigible heads above his corseTo counterfeit a grief that's half remorse.The pageant passes and the exile sleeps,And well his tongue the solemn secret keepsOf the great peace he found afar, until,Death's writ of extradition to fulfill,They brought him, helpless, from that friendly zoneTo be a show and pastime in his own—A final opportunity to thoseWho fling with equal aim the stone and rose;That at the living till his soul is freed,This at the body to conceal the deed!Lone on his hill he's lying to awaitWhat added honors may befit his state—The monument, the statue, or the arch(Where knaves may come to weep and dupes to march)Builded by clowns to brutalize the scenesHis genius beautified. To get the means,His newly good traducers all are dunnedFor contributions to the conscience fund.If each subscribe (and pay) one cent 'twill rearA structure taller than their tallest ear.Washington, May 4, 1903.
Not as two errant spheres together grindWith monstrous ruin in the vast of space,Destruction born of that malign embrace,Their hapless peoples all to death consigned—Not so when our intangible worlds of mind,Even mine and yours, each with its spirit raceOf beings shadowy in form and face,Shall drift together on some blessed wind.No, in that marriage of gloom and lightAll miracles of beauty shall be wrought,Attesting a diviner faith than man's;For all my sad-eyed daughters of the nightShall smile on your sweet seraphim of thought,Nor any jealous god forbid the banns.
When, long ago, the young world circling flewThrough wider reaches of a richer blue,New-eyed, the men and maids saw, manifest,The thoughts untold in one another's breast:Each wish displayed, and every passion learned—A look revealed them as a look discerned.But sating Time with clouds o'ercast their eyes;Desire was hidden, and the lips framed lies.A goddess then, emerging from the dust,Fair Virtue rose, the daughter of Distrust.
The Seraphs came to Christ, and said: "Behold!The man, presumptuous and overbold,Who boasted that his mercy could excelThine own, is dead and on his way to Hell."Gravely the Saviour asked: "What did he doTo make his impious assertion true?""He was a Governor, releasing allThe vilest felons ever held in thrall.No other mortal, since the dawn of time,Has ever pardoned such a mass of crime!"Christ smiled benignly on the Seraphim:"Yet I am victor, for I pardonhim."
TOM JONESMITH(loquitur): I've slept right throughThe night—a rather clever thing to do.How soundly women sleep(looks at his wife.)They're all alike. The sweetest thing in lifeIs woman when she lies with folded tongue,Its toil completed and its day-song sung.(Thump) That's the morning paper. What a boreThat it should be delivered at the door.There ought to be some expeditious wayTo get ittoone. By this long delayThe fizz gets off the news(a rap is heard).That's Jane, the housemaid; she's an early bird;She's brought it to the bedroom door, good soul.(Gets up and takes it in.)Upon the wholeThe system's not so bad a one. What's here?Gad, if they've not got after—listen dear(To sleeping wife)—young Gastrotheos! Well,If Freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fellShe'll shriek again—with laughter—seeing howThey treated Gast. with her. Yet I'll allow'T is right if he goes dining at The PupWith Mrs. Thing.
WIFE(briskly, waking up):With her? The hussy! Yes, it serves him right.
JONESMITH (continuing to "seek the light"):What's this about old Impycu? That's good!Grip—that's the funny man—says Impy shouldBe used as a decoy in shooting tramps.I knew old Impy when he had the "stamps"To buy us all out, and he wasn't thenSo bad a chap to have about. Grip's penIs just a tickler!—and the world, no doubt,Is better with it than it was without.What? thirteen ladies—Jumping Jove! we knowThem nearly all!—who gamble at a lowAnd very shocking game of cards called "draw"!O cracky, how they'll squirm! ha-ha! haw-haw!Let's see what else (wife snores). Well, I'll be blest!A woman doesn't understand a jest.Hello! What, what? the scurvy wretch proceedsTo take a fling atme, condemn him! (reads):Tom Jonesmith—my name's Thomas, vulgar cad!—Ofthe new Shavings Bank—the man's gone mad!That's libelous; I'll have him up for that—Hashad his corns cut. Devil take the rat!What business is 't of his, I'd like to know?He didn't have to cut them. Gods! what lowAnd scurril things our papers have become!You skim their contents and you get but scum.Here, Mary, (waking wife) I've been attackedIn this vile sheet. By Jove, it is a fact!
WIFE (reading it): How wicked! Who do youSuppose 't was wrote it?
JONESMITH: Who? why, whoBut Grip, the so-called funny man—he wroteMe up because I'd not discount his note.(Blushes like sunset at the hideous lie—He'll think of one that's better by and by—Throws down the paper on the floor, and treadsA lively measure on it—kicks the shredsAnd patches all about the room, and stillPerforms his jig with unabated will.)
WIFE (warbling sweetly, like an Elfland horn):Dear, do be careful of that second corn.
STANLEY.Noting some great man's composition vile:A head of wisdom and a heart of guile,A will to conquer and a soul to dare,Joined to the manners of a dancing bear,Fools unaccustomed to the wide surveyOf various Nature's compensating sway,Untaught to separate the wheat and chaff,To praise the one and at the other laugh,Yearn all in vain and impotently seekSome flawless hero upon whom to wreakThe sycophantic worship of the weak.Not so the wise, from superstition free,Who find small pleasure in the bended knee;Quick to discriminate 'twixt good and bad,And willing in the king to find the cad—No reason seen why genius and conceit,The power to dazzle and the will to cheat,The love of daring and the love of gin,Should not dwell, peaceful, in a single skin.To such, great Stanley, you're a hero still,Despite your cradling in a tub for swill.Your peasant manners can't efface the markOf light you drew across the Land of Dark.In you the extremes of character are wed,To serve the quick and villify the dead.Hero and clown! O, man of many sides,The Muse of Truth adores you and derides,And sheds, impartial, the revealing rayUpon your head of gold and feet of clay.
She stood at the ticket-seller'sSerenely removing her glove,While hundreds of strugglers and yellers,And some that were good at a shove,Were clustered behind her like bats ina cave and unwilling to speak their love.At night she still stood at that windowEndeavoring her money to reach;The crowds right and left, how they sinned—O,How dreadfully sinned in their speech!Ten miles either way they extendedtheir lines, the historians teach.She stands there to-day—legislationHas failed to remove her. The trainsNo longer pull up at that station;And over the ghastly remainsOf the army that waited and died ofold age fall the snows and the rains.
Upon this quarter-eagle's leveled face,The Lord's Prayer, legibly inscribed, I trace."Our Father which"—the pronoun there is funny,And shows the scribe to have addressed the money—"Which art in Heaven"—an error this, no doubt:The preposition should be stricken out.Needless to quote; I only have designedTo praise the frankness of the pious mindWhich thought it natural and right to join,With rare significancy, prayer and coin.
"You acted unwisely," I cried, "as you seeBy the outcome." He calmly eyed me:"When choosing the course of my action," said he,"I had not the outcome to guide me."
Once on a time, so ancient poets sing,There reigned in Godknowswhere a certain king.So great a monarch ne'er before was seen:He was a hero, even to his queen,In whose respect he held so high a placeThat none was higher,—nay, not even the ace.He was so just his Parliament declaredThose subjects happy whom his laws had spared;So wise that none of the debating throngHad ever lived to prove him in the wrong;So good that Crime his anger never feared,And Beauty boldly plucked him by the beard;So brave that if his army got a beatingNone dared to face him when he was retreating.This monarch kept a Fool to make his mirth,And loved him tenderly despite his worth.Prompted by what caprice I cannot say,He called the Fool before the throne one dayAnd to that jester seriously said:"I'll abdicate, and you shall reign instead,While I, attired in motley, will make sportTo entertain your Majesty and Court."'T was done and the Fool governed. He decreedThe time of harvest and the time of seed;Ordered the rains and made the weather clear,And had a famine every second year;Altered the calendar to suit his freak,Ordaining six whole holidays a week;Religious creeds and sacred books prepared;Made war when angry and made peace when scared.New taxes he inspired; new laws he made;Drowned those who broke them, who observed them, flayed,In short, he ruled so well that all who'd notBeen starved, decapitated, hanged or shotMade the whole country with his praises ring,Declaring he was every inch a king;And the High Priest averred 't was very oddIf one so competent were not a god.Meantime, his master, now in motley clad,Wore such a visage, woeful, wan and sad,That some condoled with him as with a brotherWho, having lost a wife, had got another.Others, mistaking his profession, oftenApproached him to be measured for a coffin.For years this highborn jester never brokeThe silence—he was pondering a joke.At last, one day, in cap-and-bells arrayed,He strode into the Council and displayedA long, bright smile, that glittered in the gloomLike a gilt epithet within a tomb.Posing his bauble like a leader's staff,To give the signal when (and why) to laugh,He brought it down with peremptory strokeAnd simultaneously cracked his joke!I can't repeat it, friends. I ne'er could schoolMyself to quote from any other fool:A jest, if it were worse than mine, would startMy tears; if better, it would break my heart.So, if you please, I'll hold you but to stateThat royal Jester's melancholy fate.The insulted nation, so the story goes,Rose as one man—the very dead arose,Springing indignant from the riven tomb,And babes unborn leapt swearing from the womb!All to the Council Chamber clamoring went,By rage distracted and on vengeance bent.In that vast hall, in due disorder laid,The tools of legislation were displayed,And the wild populace, its wrath to sate,Seized them and heaved them at the Jester's pate.Mountains of writing paper; pools and seasOf ink, awaiting, to become decrees,Royal approval—and the same in stacksLay ready for attachment, backed with wax;Pens to make laws, erasers to amend them;With mucilage convenient to extend them;Scissors for limiting their application,And acids to repeal all legislation—These, flung as missiles till the air was dense,Were most offensive weapons of offense,And by their aid the Fool was nigh destroyed.They ne'er had been so harmlessly employed.Whelmed underneath a load of legal cap,His mouth egurgitating ink on tap,His eyelids mucilaginously sealed,His fertile head by scissors made to yieldAbundant harvestage of ears, his pelt,In every wrinkle and on every welt,Quickset with pencil-points from feet to gillsAnd thickly studded with a pride of quills,The royal Jester in the dreadful strifeWas made (in short) an editor for life!An idle tale, and yet a moral lurksIn this as plainly as in greater works.I shall not give it birth: one moral hereWould die of loneliness within a year.