boot;
  The painted actress throwing down the gage
  To elder artists of the sylvan stage,
  Proving that in the time of Noah’s flood
  Two ape-skins held her whole profession’s blood;
  The critic waiting, like a hungry pup,
  To write the school—­perhaps to eat it—­up,
  As chance or luck occasion may reveal
  To earn a dollar or maraud a meal. 
  To view the school of apes these creatures go,
  Unconscious that themselves are half the show. 
  These, if the simian his course but trim
  To copy them as they have copied him,
  Will call him “educated.”  Of a verity
  There’s much to learn by study of posterity.

A POET’S HOPE.

  ’Twas a weary-looking mortal, and he wandered near the portal
    Of the melancholy City of the Discontented Dead. 
  He was pale and worn exceeding and his manner was unheeding,
    As if it could not matter what he did nor what he said.

  “Sacred stranger”—­I addressed him with a reverence befitting
    The austere, unintermitting, dread solemnity he wore;
  ’Tis the custom, too, prevailing in that vicinage when hailing
    One who possibly may be a person lately “gone before”—­

  “Sacred stranger, much I ponder on your evident dejection,
    But my carefulest reflection leaves the riddle still unread. 
  How do you yourself explain your dismal tendency to wander
    By the melancholy City of the Discontented Dead?”

  Then that solemn person, pausing in the march that he was making,
    Roused himself as if awaking, fixed his dull and stony eye
  On my countenance and, slowly, like a priest devout and holy,
    Chanted in a mournful monotone the following reply: 

  “O my brother, do not fear it; I’m no disembodied spirit—­
    I am Lampton, the Slang Poet, with a price upon my head. 
  I am watching by this portal for some late lamented mortal
    To arise in his disquietude and leave his earthy bed.

  “Then I hope to take possession and pull in the earth above me
    And, renouncing my profession, ne’er be heard of any more. 
  For there’s not a soul to love me and no living thing respects me,
    Which so painfully affects me that I fain would ‘go before.’”

  Then I felt a deep compassion for the gentleman’s dejection,
    For privation of affection would refrigerate a frog. 
  So I said:  “If nothing human, and if neither man nor woman
    Can appreciate the fashion of your merit—­buy a dog.”

THE WOMAN AND THE DEVIL.

  When Man and Woman had been made,
    All but the disposition,
  The Devil to the workshop strayed,
    And somehow gained admission.

  The Master rested from his work,
    For this was on a Sunday,
  The man was snoring like a Turk,
    Content to wait till Monday.