A PARADOX.
“If life were not worth having,”
said the preacher,
“’T would have in suicide
one pleasant feature.”
“An error,” said the pessimist,
“you’re making:
What’s not worth having cannot be
worth taking.”
FOR MERIT.
To Parmentier Parisians raise
A statue fine and large:
He cooked potatoes fifty ways,
Nor ever led a charge.
“Palmam qui meruit"—the
rest
You knew as well as I;
And best of all to him that best
Of sayings will apply.
Let meaner men the poet’s bays
Or warrior’s medal wear;
Who cooks potatoes fifty ways
Shall bear the palm—de
terre.
A BIT OF SCIENCE.
What! photograph in colors? ’Tis
a dream
And he who dreams it is not
overwise,
If colors are vibration they but seem,
And have no being. But
if Tyndall lies,
Why, come, then—photograph
my lady’s eyes.
Nay, friend, you can’t; the splendor
of their blue,
As on my own beclouded orbs
they rest,
To naught but vibratory motion’s
due,
As heart, head, limbs and
all I am attest.
How could her eyes, at rest themselves,
be making
In me so uncontrollable a shaking?
THE TABLES TURNED.
Over the man the street car ran,
And the driver did never grin.
“O killer of men, pray tell me when
Your laughter means to begin.
“Ten years to a day I’ve observed
you slay,
And I never have missed before
Your jubilant peals as your crunching
wheels
Were spattered with human
gore.
“Why is it, my boy, that you smother
your joy,
And why do you make no sign
Of the merry mind that is dancing behind
A solemner face than mine?”
The driver replied: “I would
laugh till I cried
If I had bisected you;
But I’d like to explain, if I can
for the pain,
’T is myself that I’ve
cut in two.”
TO A DEJECTED POET.
Thy gift, if that it be of God,
Thou hast no warrant to appraise,
Nor say: “Here
part, O Muse, our ways,
The road too stony to be trod.”
Not thine to call the labor hard
And the reward inadequate.
Who haggles o’er his
hire with Fate
Is better bargainer than bard.
What! count the effort labor lost
When thy good angel holds
the reed?
It were a sorry thing indeed
To stay him till thy palm be crossed.
“The laborer is worthy”—nay,
The sacred ministry of song
Is rapture!—’t
were a grievous wrong
To fix a wages-rate for play.
A FOOL.
Says Anderson, Theosophist:
“Among the many that exist
In modern halls,
Some lived in ancient Egypt’s clime
And in their childhood saw the prime
Of Karnak’s walls.”