Lo! the wild rabbit, happy in the pride
Of 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!”
DEMOCRACY.
Let slaves and subjects with unvaried
psalms
Before their sovereign execute salaams;
The freeman scorns one idol to adore—
Tom, Dick and Harry and himself are four.
THE NEW “ULALUME.”
The skies they were ashen and sober,
The leaves they were crisped
and sere,—
" " " withering
" "
It was night in the lonesome October
Of 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
" "
CONSOLATION.
Little’s the good to sit and grieve
Because the serpent tempted Eve.
Better to wipe your eyes and take
A club and go out and kill a snake.
What do you gain by cursing Nick
For playing her such a scurvy trick?
Better go out and some villain find
Who 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 limb
Hadn’t tempted her she’d have
tempted him.
FATE.
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 estate
And 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 makes
The 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.
PHILOSOPHER BIMM.
Republicans think Jonas Bimm
A Democrat gone mad,
And Democrats consider him
Republican and bad.
The Tough reviles him as a Dude
And gives it him right hot;
The Dude condemns his crassitude
And calls him sans culottes.
Derided as an Anglophile
By 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 call
Would kill him if they could;
The Sinners (scientists and all)
Complain that he is good.