Book: Shapes of Clay

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And now that tireless lawyer-man
Took breath, and then again began:
"Your Honor, if you did attend
To what I've urged (my learned friend
Nodded concurrence) to support
The motion I have made, this court
May soon adjourn. With your assent
I've shown abundant precedent
For introducing now, though late,
New evidence to exculpate
My client. So, if you'll allow,
I'll prove an _alibi_!" "What?--how?"
Stammered the judge. "Well, yes, I can't
Deny your showing, and I grant
The motion. Do I understand
You undertake to prove--good land!--
That when the crime--you mean to show
Your client wasn't _there_?" "O, no,
I cannot quite do that, I find:
My _alibi's_ another kind
Of _alibi_,--I'll make it clear,
Your Honor, that he isn't _here_."
The Darky here upreared his head,
Tranquillity affrighted fled
And consternation reigned instead!




REBUKE.


When Admonition's hand essays
Our greed to curse,
Its lifted finger oft displays
Our missing purse.




J.F.B.


How well this man unfolded to our view
The world's beliefs of Death and Heaven and Hell--
This man whose own convictions none could tell,
Nor if his maze of reason had a clew.
Dogmas he wrote for daily bread, but knew
The fair philosophies of doubt so well
That while we listened to his words there fell
Some that were strangely comforting, though true.
Marking how wise we grew upon his doubt,
We said: "If so, by groping in the night,
He can proclaim some certain paths of trust,
How great our profit if he saw about
His feet the highways leading to the light."
Now he sees all. Ah, Christ! his mouth is dust!




THE DYING STATESMAN.


It is a politician man--
He draweth near his end,
And friends weep round that partisan,
Of every man the friend.

Between the Known and the Unknown
He lieth on the strand;
The light upon the sea is thrown
That lay upon the land.

It shineth in his glazing eye,
It burneth on his face;
God send that when we come to die
We know that sign of grace!

Upon his lips his blessed sprite
Poiseth her joyous wing.
"How is it with thee, child of light?
Dost hear the angels sing?"

"The song I hear, the crown I see,
And know that God is love.
Farewell, dark world--I go to be
A postmaster above!"

For him no monumental arch,
But, O, 'tis good and brave
To see the Grand Old Party march
To office o'er his grave!




THE DEATH OF GRANT.


Father! whose hard and cruel law
Is part of thy compassion's plan,
Thy works presumptuously we scan
For what the prophets say they saw.

Unbidden still the awful slope
Walling us in we climb to gain
Assurance of the shining plain
That faith has certified to hope.

In vain!--beyond the circling hill
The shadow and the cloud abide.
Subdue the doubt, our spirits guide
To trust the Record and be still.

To trust it loyally as he
Who, heedful of his high design,
Ne'er raised a seeking eye to thine,
But wrought thy will unconsciously,

Disputing not of chance or fate,
Nor questioning of cause or creed;
For anything but duty's deed
Too simply wise, too humbly great.

The cannon syllabled his name;
His shadow shifted o'er the land,
Portentous, as at his command
Successive cities sprang to flame!

He fringed the continent with fire,
The rivers ran in lines of light!
Thy will be done on earth--if right
Or wrong he cared not to inquire.

His was the heavy hand, and his
The service of the despot blade;
His the soft answer that allayed
War's giant animosities.

Let us have peace: our clouded eyes,
Fill, Father, with another light,
That we may see with clearer sight
Thy servant's soul in Paradise.




THE FOUNTAIN REFILLED.


Of Hans Pietro Shanahan
(Who was a most ingenious man)
The Muse of History records
That he'd get drunk as twenty lords.

He'd get so truly drunk that men
Stood by to marvel at him when
His slow advance along the street
Was but a vain cycloidal feat.

And when 'twas fated that he fall
With a wide geographical sprawl,
They signified assent by sounds
Heard (faintly) at its utmost bounds.

And yet this Mr. Shanahan
(Who was a most ingenious man)
Cast not on wine his thirsty eyes
When it was red or otherwise.

All malt, or spirituous, tope
He loathed as cats dissent from soap;
And cider, if it touched his lip,
Evoked a groan at every sip.

But still, as heretofore explained,
He not infrequently was grained.
(I'm not of those who call it "corned."
Coarse speech I've always duly scorned.)

Though truth to say, and that's but right,
Strong drink (it hath an adder's bite!)
Was what had put him in the mud,
The only kind he used was blood!

Alas, that an immortal soul
Addicted to the flowing bowl,
The emptied flagon should again
Replenish from a neighbor's vein.

But, Mr. Shanahan was so
Constructed, and his taste that low.
Nor more deplorable was he
In kind of thirst than in degree;

For sometimes fifty souls would pay
The debt of nature in a day
To free him from the shame and pain
Of dread Sobriety's misreign.

His native land, proud of its sense
Of his unique inabstinence,
Abated something of its pride
At thought of his unfilled inside.

And some the boldness had to say
'Twere well if he were called away
To slake his thirst forevermore
In oceans of celestial gore.

But Hans Pietro Shanahan
(Who was a most ingenious man)
Knew that his thirst was mortal; so
Remained unsainted here below--

Unsainted and unsaintly, for
He neither went to glory nor
To abdicate his power deigned
Where, under Providence, he reigned,

But kept his Boss's power accurst
To serve his wild uncommon thirst.
Which now had grown so truly great
It was a drain upon the State.

Soon, soon there came a time, alas!
When he turned down an empty glass--
All practicable means were vain
His special wassail to obtain.

In vain poor Decimation tried
To furnish forth the needful tide;
And Civil War as vainly shed
Her niggard offering of red.

Poor Shanahan! his thirst increased
Until he wished himself deceased,
Invoked the firearm and the knife,
But could not die to save his life!

He was so dry his own veins made
No answer to the seeking blade;
So parched that when he would have passed
Away he could not breathe his last.

'Twas then, when almost in despair,
(Unlaced his shoon, unkempt his hair)
He saw as in a dream a way
To wet afresh his mortal clay.

Yes, Hans Pietro Shanahan
(Who was a most ingenious man)
Saw freedom, and with joy and pride
"Thalassa! (or Thalatta!)" cried.

Straight to the Aldermen went he,
With many a "pull" and many a fee,
And many a most corrupt "combine"
(The Press for twenty cents a line

Held out and fought him--O, God, bless
Forevermore the holy Press!)
Till he had franchises complete
For trolley lines on every street!

The cars were builded and, they say,
Were run on rails laid every way--
Rhomboidal roads, and circular,
And oval--everywhere a car--

Square, dodecagonal (in great
Esteem the shape called Figure 8)
And many other kinds of shapes
As various as tails of apes.

No other group of men's abodes
E'er had such odd electric roads,
That winding in and winding out,
Began and ended all about.

No city had, unless in Mars,
That city's wealth of trolley cars.
They ran by day, they flew by night,
And O, the sorry, sorry sight!

And Hans Pietro Shanahan
(Who was a most ingenious man)
Incessantly, the Muse records,
Lay drunk as twenty thousand lords!




LAUS LUCIS.

Theosophists are about to build a "Temple for the revival of the
Mysteries of Antiquity."--_Vide the Newspapers, passim_.


Each to his taste: some men prefer to play
At mystery, as others at piquet.
Some sit in mystic meditation; some
Parade the street with tambourine and drum.
One studies to decipher ancient lore
Which, proving stuff, he studies all the more;
Another swears that learning is but good
To darken things already understood,
Then writes upon Simplicity so well
That none agree on what he wants to tell,
And future ages will declare his pen
Inspired by gods with messages to men.
To found an ancient order those devote
Their time--with ritual, regalia, goat,
Blankets for tossing, chairs of little ease
And all the modern inconveniences;
These, saner, frown upon unmeaning rites
And go to church for rational delights.
So all are suited, shallow and profound,
The prophets prosper and the world goes round.
For me--unread in the occult, I'm fain
To damn all mysteries alike as vain,
Spurn the obscure and base my faith upon
The Revelations of the good St. John.

1897.




NANINE.


We heard a song-bird trilling--
'T was but a night ago.
Such rapture he was rilling
As only we could know.

This morning he is flinging
His music from the tree,
But something in the singing
Is not the same to me.

His inspiration fails him,
Or he has lost his skill.
Nanine, Nanine, what ails him
That he should sing so ill?

Nanine is not replying--
She hears no earthly song.
The sun and bird are lying
And the night is, O, so long!




TECHNOLOGY.


'Twas a serious person with locks of gray
And a figure like a crescent;
His gravity, clearly, had come to stay,
But his smile was evanescent.

He stood and conversed with a neighbor, and
With (likewise) a high falsetto;
And he stabbed his forefinger into his hand
As if it had been a stiletto.

His words, like the notes of a tenor drum,
Came out of his head unblended,
And the wonderful altitude of some
Was exceptionally splendid.

While executing a shake of the head,
With the hand, as it were, of a master,
This agonizing old gentleman said:
"'Twas a truly sad disaster!

"Four hundred and ten longs and shorts in all,
Went down"--he paused and snuffled.
A single tear was observed to fall,
And the old man's drum was muffled.

"A very calamitous year," he said.
And again his head-piece hoary
He shook, and another pearl he shed,
As if he wept _con amore._

"O lacrymose person," I cried, "pray why
Should these failures so affect you?
With speculators in stocks no eye
That's normal would ever connect you."

He focused his orbs upon mine and smiled
In a sinister sort of manner.
"Young man," he said, "your words are wild:
I spoke of the steamship 'Hanner.'

"For she has went down in a howlin' squall,
And my heart is nigh to breakin'--
Four hundred and ten longs and shorts in all
Will never need undertakin'!

"I'm in the business myself," said he,
"And you've mistook my expression;
For I uses the technical terms, you see,
Employed in my perfession."

That old undertaker has joined the throng
On the other side of the River,
But I'm still unhappy to think I'm a "long,"
And a tape-line makes me shiver.




A REPLY TO A LETTER.


O nonsense, parson--tell me not they thrive
And jubilate who follow your dictation.
The good are the unhappiest lot alive--
I know they are from careful observation.
If freedom from the terrors of damnation
Lengthens the visage like a telescope,
And lacrymation is a sign of hope,
Then I'll continue, in my dreadful plight,
To tread the dusky paths of sin, and grope
Contentedly without your lantern's light;
And though in many a bog beslubbered quite,
Refuse to flay me with ecclesiastic soap.

You say 'tis a sad world, seeing I'm condemned,
With many a million others of my kidney.
Each continent's Hammed, Japheted and Shemmed
With sinners--worldlings like Sir Philip Sidney
And scoffers like Voltaire, who thought it bliss
To simulate respect for Genesis--
Who bent the mental knee as if in prayer,
But mocked at Moses underneath his hair,
And like an angry gander bowed his head to hiss.

Seeing such as these, who die without contrition,
Must go to--beg your pardon, sir--perdition,
The sons of light, you tell me, can't be gay,
But count it sin of the sort called omission
The groan to smother or the tear to stay
Or fail to--what is that they live by?--pray.
So down they flop, and the whole serious race is
Put by divine compassion on a praying basis.

Well, if you take it so to heart, while yet
Our own hearts are so light with nature's leaven,
You'll weep indeed when we in Hades sweat,
And you look down upon us out of Heaven.
In fancy, lo! I see your wailing shades
Thronging the crystal battlements. Cascades
Of tears spring singing from each golden spout,
Run roaring from the verge with hoarser sound,
Dash downward through the glimmering profound,
Quench the tormenting flame and put the Devil out!

Presumptuous ass! to you no power belongs
To pitchfork me to Heaven upon the prongs
Of a bad pen, whose disobedient sputter,
With less of ink than incoherence fraught
Befits the folly that it tries to utter.
Brains, I observe, as well as tongues, can stutter:
You suffer from impediment of thought.

When next you "point the way to Heaven," take care:
Your fingers all being thumbs, point, Heaven knows where!
Farewell, poor dunce! your letter though I blame,
Bears witness how my anger I can tame:
I've called you everything except your hateful name!




TO OSCAR WILDE.


Because from Folly's lips you got
Some babbled mandate to subdue
The realm of Common Sense, and you
Made promise and considered not--

Because you strike a random blow
At what you do not understand,
And beckon with a friendly hand
To something that you do not know,

I hold no speech of your desert,
Nor answer with porrected shield
The wooden weapon that you wield,
But meet you with a cast of dirt.

Dispute with such a thing as you--
Twin show to the two-headed calf?
Why, sir, if I repress my laugh,
'T is more than half the world can do.

1882.




PRAYER.


Fear not in any tongue to call
Upon the Lord--He's skilled in all.
But if He answereth my plea
He speaketh one unknown to me.




A "BORN LEADER OF MEN."


Tuckerton Tamerlane Morey Mahosh
Is a statesman of world-wide fame,
With a notable knack at rhetorical bosh
To glorify somebody's name--
Somebody chosen by Tuckerton's masters
To succor the country from divers disasters
Portentous to Mr. Mahosh.

Percy O'Halloran Tarpy Cabee
Is in the political swim.
He cares not a button for men, not he:
Great principles captivate him--
Principles cleverly cut out and fitted
To Percy's capacity, duly submitted,
And fought for by Mr. Cabee.

Drusus Turn Swinnerton Porfer Fitzurse
Holds office the most of his life.
For men nor for principles cares he a curse,
But much for his neighbor's wife.
The Ship of State leaks, but _he_ doesn't pump any,
Messrs. Mahosh, Cabee & Company
Pump for good Mr. Fitzurse.




TO THE BARTHOLDI STATUE.


O Liberty, God-gifted--
Young and immortal maid--
In your high hand uplifted;
The torch declares your trade.

Its crimson menace, flaming
Upon the sea and shore,
Is, trumpet-like, proclaiming
That Law shall be no more.

Austere incendiary,
We're blinking in the light;
Where is your customary
Grenade of dynamite?

Where are your staves and switches
For men of gentle birth?
Your mask and dirk for riches?
Your chains for wit and worth?

Perhaps, you've brought the halters
You used in the old days,
When round religion's altars
You stabled Cromwell's bays?

Behind you, unsuspected,
Have you the axe, fair wench,
Wherewith you once collected
A poll-tax from the French?

America salutes you--
Preparing to disgorge.
Take everything that suits you,
And marry Henry George.

1894



AN UNMERRY CHRISTMAS.


Christmas, you tell me, comes but once a year.
One place it never comes, and that is here.
Here, in these pages no good wishes spring,
No well-worn greetings tediously ring--
For Christmas greetings are like pots of ore:
The hollower they are they ring the more.
Here shall no holly cast a spiny shade,
Nor mistletoe my solitude invade,
No trinket-laden vegetable come,
No jorum steam with Sheolate of rum.
No shrilling children shall their voices rear.
Hurrah for Christmas without Christmas cheer!

No presents, if you please--I know too well
What Herbert Spencer, if he didn't tell
(I know not if he did) yet might have told
Of present-giving in the days of old,
When Early Man with gifts propitiated
The chiefs whom most he doubted, feared and hated,
Or tendered them in hope to reap some rude
Advantage from the taker's gratitude.
Since thus the Gift its origin derives
(How much of its first character survives
You know as well as I) my stocking's tied,
My pocket buttoned--with my soul inside.
I save my money and I save my pride.

Dinner? Yes; thank you--just a human body
Done to a nutty brown, and a tear toddy
To give me appetite; and as for drink,
About a half a jug of blood, I think,
Will do; for still I love the red, red wine,
Coagulating well, with wrinkles fine
Fretting the satin surface of its flood.
O tope of kings--divine Falernian--blood!

Duse take the shouting fowls upon the limb,
The kneeling cattle and the rising hymn!
Has not a pagan rights to be regarded--
His heart assaulted and his ear bombarded
With sentiments and sounds that good old Pan
Even in his demonium would ban?

No, friends--no Christmas here, for I have sworn
To keep my heart hard and my knees unworn.
Enough you have of jester, player, priest:
I as the skeleton attend your feast,
In the mad revelry to make a lull
With shaken finger and with bobbing skull.
However you my services may flout,
Philosophy disdain and reason doubt,
I mean to hold in customary state,
My dismal revelry and celebrate
My yearly rite until the crack o' doom,
Ignore the cheerful season's warmth and bloom
And cultivate an oasis of gloom.




BY A DEFEATED LITIGANT.


Liars for witnesses; for lawyers brutes
Who lose their tempers to retrieve their suits;
Cowards for jurors; and for judge a clown
Who ne'er took up the law, yet lays it down;
Justice denied, authority abused,
And the one honest person the accused--
Thy courts, my country, all these awful years,
Move fools to laughter and the wise to tears.




AN EPITAPH.


Here lies Greer Harrison, a well cracked louse--
So small a tenant of so big a house!
He joyed in fighting with his eyes (his fist
Prudently pendent from a peaceful wrist)
And loved to loll on the Parnassian mount,
His pen to suck and all his thumbs to count,--
What poetry he'd written but for lack
Of skill, when he had counted, to count back!
Alas, no more he'll climb the sacred steep
To wake the lyre and put the world to sleep!
To his rapt lip his soul no longer springs
And like a jaybird from a knot-hole sings.
No more the clubmen, pickled with his wine,
Spread wide their ears and hiccough "That's divine!"
The genius of his purse no longer draws
The pleasing thunders of a paid applause.
All silent now, nor sound nor sense remains,
Though riddances of worms improve his brains.
All his no talents to the earth revert,
And Fame concludes the record: "Dirt to dirt!"




THE POLITICIAN.


"Let Glory's sons manipulate
The tiller of the Ship of State.
Be mine the humble, useful toil
To work the tiller of the soil."




AN INSCRIPTION

For a Proposed Monument in Washington to Him who
Made it Beautiful.


Erected to "Boss" Shepherd by the dear
Good folk he lived and moved among in peace--
Guarded on either hand by the police,
With soldiers in his front and in his rear.




FROM VIRGINIA TO PARIS.


The polecat, sovereign of its native wood,
Dashes damnation upon bad and good;
The health of all the upas trees impairs
By exhalations deadlier than theirs;
Poisons the rattlesnake and warts the toad--
The creeks go rotten and the rocks corrode!
She shakes o'er breathless hill and shrinking dale
The horrid aspergillus of her tail!
From every saturated hair, till dry,
The spargent fragrances divergent fly,
Deafen the earth and scream along the sky!

Removed to alien scenes, amid the strife
Of urban odors to ungladden life--
Where gas and sewers and dead dogs conspire
The flesh to torture and the soul to fire--
Where all the "well defined and several stinks"
Known to mankind hold revel and high jinks--
Humbled in spirit, smitten with a sense
Of lost distinction, leveled eminence,
She suddenly resigns her baleful trust,
Nor ever lays again our mortal dust.
Her powers atrophied, her vigor sunk,
She lives deodorized, a sweeter skunk.




A "MUTE INGLORIOUS MILTON."


"O, I'm the Unaverage Man,
But you never have heard of me,
For my brother, the Average Man, outran
My fame with rapiditee,
And I'm sunk in Oblivion's sea,
But my bully big brother the world can span
With his wide notorietee.
I do everything that I can
To make 'em attend to me,
But the papers ignore the Unaverage Man
With a weird uniformitee."

So sang with a dolorous note
A voice that I heard from the beach;
On the sable waters it seemed to float
Like a mortal part of speech.
The sea was Oblivion's sea,
And I cried as I plunged to swim:
"The Unaverage Man shall reside with me."
But he didn't--I stayed with him!




THE FREE TRADER'S LAMENT.


Oft from a trading-boat I purchased spice
And shells and corals, brought for my inspection
From the fair tropics--paid a Christian price
And was content in my fool's paradise,
Where never had been heard the word "Protection."

'T was my sole island; there I dwelt alone--
No customs-house, collector nor collection,
But a man came, who, in a pious tone
Condoled with me that I had never known
The manifest advantage of Protection.

So, when the trading-boat arrived one day,
He threw a stink-pot into its mid-section.
The traders paddled for their lives away,
Nor came again into that haunted bay,
The blessed home thereafter of Protection.

Then down he sat, that philanthropic man,
And spat upon some mud of his selection,
And worked it, with his knuckles in a pan,
To shapes of shells and coral things, and span
A thread of song in glory of Protection.

He baked them in the sun. His air devout
Enchanted me. I made a genuflexion:
"God help you, gentle sir," I said. "No doubt,"
He answered gravely, "I'll get on without
Assistance now that we have got Protection."

Thenceforth I bought his wares--at what a price
For shells and corals of such imperfection!
"Ah, now," said he, "your lot is truly nice."
But still in all that isle there was no spice
To season to my taste that dish, Protection.




SUBTERRANEAN PHANTASIES.


I died. As meekly in the earth I lay,
With shriveled fingers reverently folded,
The worm--uncivil engineer!--my clay
Tunneled industriously, and the mole did.
My body could not dodge them, but my soul did;
For that had flown from this terrestrial ball
And I was rid of it for good and all.

So there I lay, debating what to do--
What measures might most usefully be taken
To circumvent the subterranean crew
Of anthropophagi and save my bacon.
My fortitude was all this while unshaken,
But any gentleman, of course, protests
Against receiving uninvited guests.

However proud he might be of his meats,
Not even Apicius, nor, I think, Lucullus,
Wasted on tramps his culinary sweets;
"_Aut Caesar_," say judicious hosts, "_aut nullus_."
And though when Marcius came unbidden Tullus
Aufidius feasted him because he starved,
Marcius by Tullus afterward was carved.

We feed the hungry, as the book commands
(For men might question else our orthodoxy)
But do not care to see the outstretched hands,
And so we minister to them by proxy.
When Want, in his improper person, knocks he
Finds we're engaged. The graveworm's very fresh
To think we like his presence in the flesh.

So, as I said, I lay in doubt; in all
That underworld no judges could determine
My rights. When Death approaches them they fall,
And falling, naturally soil their ermine.
And still below ground, as above, the vermin
That work by dark and silent methods win
The case--the burial case that one is in.

Cases at law so slowly get ahead,
Even when the right is visibly unclouded,
That if all men are classed as quick and dead,
The judges all are dead, though some unshrouded.
Pray Jove that when they're actually crowded
On Styx's brink, and Charon rows in sight,
His bark prove worse than Cerberus's bite.

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