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.