“Resolved that we will post,” the tradesmen say,“All names of debtors who do never pay.”“Whose shall be first?” inquires the ready scribe–“Who are the chiefs of the marauding tribe?”Lo! high Parnassus, lifting from the plain,Upon his hoary peak, a noble fane!Within that temple all the names are scrolledOf village bards upon a slab of gold;To […]

Down in the state of Maine, the story goes,A woman, to secure a lapsing pension,Married a soldier–though the good Lord knowsThat very common act scarce calls for mention.What makes it worthy to be writ and read–The man she married had been nine hours dead! Now, marrying a corpse is not an actFamiliar to our daily […]

Dear, if I never saw your face again;If all the music of your voice were muteAs that of a forlorn and broken lute;If only in my dreams I might attainThe benediction of your touch, how vainWere Faith to justify the old pursuitOf happiness, or Reason to confuteThe pessimist philosophy of pain.Yet Love not altogether is […]

O statesmen, what would you be at,With torches, flags and bands?You make me first throw up my hat,And then my hands.

Hail, peerless Pun! thou last and best,Most rare and excellent bequestOf dying idiot to the witHe died of, rat-like, in a pit! Thyself disguised, in many a wayThou let’st thy sudden splendor play,Adorning all where’er it turns,As the revealing bull’s-eye burns,Of the dim thief, and plays its trickUpon the lock he means to pick. Yet […]

From pride, joy, hate, greed, melancholy–From any kind of vice, or folly,Bias, propensity or passionThat is in prevalence and fashion,Save one, the sufferer or loverMay, by the grace of God, recover:Alone that spiritual tetter,The zeal to make creation better,Glows still immedicably warmer.Who knows of a reformed reformer?

I ne’er could be entirely fondOf any maiden who’s a blonde,And no brunette that e’er I sawHad charms my heart’s wholewarmth to draw. Yet sure no girl was ever madeJust half of light and half of shade.And so, this happy mean to get,I love a blonde and a brunette.

Daughter of God! Audacity divine–Of clowns the terror and of brains the sign–Not thou the inspirer of the rushing fool,Not thine of idiots the vocal drool:Thy bastard sister of the brow of brass,Presumption, actuates the charging ass.Sky-born Audacity! of thee who singsShould strike with freer hand than mine the strings;The notes should mount on pinions […]

I fell asleep and dreamed that IWas flung, like Vulcan, from the sky;Like him was lamed–another part:His leg was crippled and my heart.I woke in time to see my loveConceal a letter in her glove.

The King of Scotland, years and years ago,Convened his courtiers in a gallant rowAnd thus addressed them: “Gentle sirs, from youAbundant counsel I have had, and true:What laws to make to serve the public weal;What laws of Nature’s making to repeal;What old religion is the only true one,And what the greater merit of some new […]

“Authority, authority!” they shoutWhose minds, not large enough to hold a doubt,Some chance opinion ever entertain,By dogma billeted upon their brain.“Ha!” they exclaim with choreatic glee,“Here’s Dabster if you won’t give in to me–Dabster, sir, Dabster, to whom all men lookWith reverence!” The fellow wrote a book.It matters not that many another wightHas thought more […]

“Let music flourish!” So he said and died.Hark! ere he’s gone the minstrelsy begins:The symphonies ascend, a swelling tide,Melodious thunders fill the welkin wide–The grand old lawyers, chinning on their chins!

The showman (blessing in a thousand shapes!)Parades a “School of Educated Apes!”Small education’s needed, I opine,Or native wit, to make a monkey shine;The brute exhibited has naught to doBut ape the larger apes who come to view–The hoodlum with his horrible grimace,Long upper lip and furtive, shuffling pace,Significant reminders of the timeWhen hunters, not policemen, […]

A bull imprisoned in a stallBroke boldly the confining wall,And found himself, when out of bounds,Within a washerwoman’s grounds.Where, hanging on a line to dry,A crimson skirt inflamed his eye.With bellowings that woke the dead,He bent his formidable head,With pointed horns and gnarly forehead;Then, planting firm his shoulders horrid,Began, with rage made half insane,To paw […]

Wild wanton Luxury lays waste the landWith difficulty tilled by Thrift’s hard hand!Then dies the State!–and, in its carcass found,The millionaires, all maggot-like, abound.Alas! was it for this that Warren died,And Arnold sold himself to t’ other side,Stark piled at Bennington his British dead,And Gates at Camden, Lee at Monmouth, fled?–For this that Perry did […]

Dull were the days and sober,The mountains were brown and bare,For the season was sad OctoberAnd a dirge was in the air. The mated starlings flew overTo the isles of the southern sea.She wept for her warrior lover–Wept and exclaimed: “Ah, me! “Long years have I mourned my darlingIn his battle-bed at rest;And it’s O, […]

Time was the local poets sang their songsBeneath their breath in terror of the thongsI snapped about their shins. Though mild the strokeBards, like the conies, are “a feeble folk,”Fearing all noises but the one they makeThemselves–at which all other mortals quake.Now from their cracked and disobedient throats,Like rats from sewers scampering, their notesPour forth […]

The lily cranks, the lily cranks,The loppy, loony lasses!They multiply in rising ranksTo execute their solemn pranks,They moon along in masses.Blow, sweet lily, in the shade! O,Sunflower decorate the dado! The maiden ass, the maiden ass,The tall and tailless jenny!In limp attire as green as grass,She stands, a monumental brass,The one of one too many.Blow, […]

Cheeta Raibama Chunder Sen,The wisest and the best of men,Betook him to the place where satWith folded feet upon a matOf precious stones beneath a palm,In sweet and everlasting calm,That ancient and immortal gent,The God of Rational Content.As tranquil and unmoved as Fate,The deity reposed in state,With palm to palm and sole to sole,And beaded […]

So, Beecher’s dead. His was a great soul, too–Great as a giant organ is, whose reedsHold in them all the souls of all the creedsThat man has ever taught and never knew. When on this mighty instrument He laidHis hand Who fashioned it, our common moanWas suppliant in its thundering. The toneGrew more vivacious when […]