As many “cures” as addle wits
    Who know not what the ailment is! 
  Meanwhile the patient foams and spits
      Like a gin fizz.

  Alas, poor Body Politic,
    Your fate is all too clearly read: 
  To be not altogether quick,
      Nor very dead.

  You take your exercise in squirms,
    Your rest in fainting fits between. 
  ’T is plain that your disorder’s worms—­
      Worms fat and lean.

  Worm Capital, Worm Labor dwell
    Within your maw and muscle’s scope. 
  Their quarrels make your life a Hell,
      Your death a hope.

  God send you find not such an end
    To ills however sharp and huge! 
  God send you convalesce!  God send
      You vermifuge.

THE BROTHERS.

  Scene—­A lawyer’s dreadful den. 
  Enter stall-fed citizen.

  LAWYER.—­’Mornin’.  How-de-do?

  CITIZEN.—­Sir, same to you. 
  Called as counsel to retain you
  In a case that I’ll explain you. 
  Sad, so sad!  Heart almost broke. 
  Hang it! where’s my kerchief?  Smoke? 
  Brother, sir, and I, of late,
  Came into a large estate. 
  Brother’s—­h’m, ha,—­rather queer
  Sometimes (tapping forehead) here. 
  What he needs—­you know—­a “writ”—­
  Something, eh? that will permit
  Me to manage, sir, in fine,
  His estate, as well as mine. 
  ’Course he’ll kick; ’t will break, I fear,
  His loving heart—­excuse this tear.

  LAWYER.—­Have you nothing more? 
  All of this you said before—­
  When last night I took your case.

  CITIZEN.—­Why, sir, your face
  Ne’er before has met my view!

  LAWYER.—­Eh?  The devil!  True: 
  My mistake—­it was your brother. 
  But you’re very like each other.

THE CYNIC’S BEQUEST

  In that fair city, Ispahan,
  There dwelt a problematic man,
  Whose angel never was released,
  Who never once let out his beast,
  But kept, through all the seasons’ round,
  Silence unbroken and profound. 
  No Prophecy, with ear applied
  To key-hole of the future, tried
  Successfully to catch a hint
  Of what he’d do nor when begin ’t;
  As sternly did his past defy
  Mild Retrospection’s backward eye. 
  Though all admired his silent ways,
  The women loudest were in praise: 
  For ladies love those men the most
  Who never, never, never boast—­
  Who ne’er disclose their aims and ends
  To naughty, naughty, naughty friends.

  Yet, sooth to say, the fame outran
  The merit of this doubtful man,
  For taciturnity in him,
  Though not a mere caprice or whim,
  Was not a virtue, such as truth,
  High birth, or beauty, wealth or youth.

  ’Twas known, indeed, throughout the span
  Of Ispahan, of Gulistan—­
  These utmost limits of the earth
  Knew that the man was dumb from birth.