Every man and every woman was devotionally drunk. 
  A half a standard gallon (says history) per head
  Of the best Kentucky prime was at that ceremony shed. 
  O, the glory of that country!  O, the happy, happy folk. 
  By the might of prayer delivered from Nature’s broken yoke! 
  Lo! the plains to the horizon all are yellowing with rye,
  And the corn upon the hill-top lifts its banners to the sky! 
  Gone the wagons, gone the drivers, and the road is grown to grass,
  Over which the incalescent Bourbon did aforetime pass. 
  Pikeville (that’s the name they’ve given, in their wild, romantic way,
  To that irrigation district) now distills, statistics say,
  Something like a hundred gallons, out of each recurrent crop,
  To the head of population—­and consumes it, every drop!

A BUILDER.

  I saw the devil—­he was working free: 
  A customs-house he builded by the sea. 
  “Why do you this?” The devil raised his head;
  “Churches and courts I’ve built enough,” he said.

AN AUGURY.

  Upon my desk a single spray,
    With starry blossoms fraught. 
  I write in many an idle way,
    Thinking one serious thought.

  “O flowers, a fine Greek name ye bear,
    And with a fine Greek grace.” 
  Be still, O heart, that turns to share
    The sunshine of a face.

  “Have ye no messages—­no brief,
    Still sign:  ‘Despair’, or ’Hope’?”
  A sudden stir of stem and leaf—­
    A breath of heliotrope!

LUSUS POLITICUS.

  Come in, old gentleman.  How do you do? 
    Delighted, I’m sure, that you’ve called. 
  I’m a sociable sort of a chap and you
  Are a pleasant-appearing person, too,
    With a head agreeably bald. 
  That’s right—­sit down in the scuttle of coal
    And put up your feet in a chair. 
    It is better to have them there: 
  And I’ve always said that a hat of lead,
    Such as I see you wear,
  Was a better hat than a hat of glass. 
  And your boots of brass
    Are a natural kind of boots, I swear. 
    “May you blow your nose on a paper of pins?”
        Why, certainly, man, why not? 
    I rather expected you’d do it before,
    When I saw you poking it in at the door. 
        It’s dev’lish hot—­
  The weather, I mean.  “You are twins”? 
  Why, that was evident at the start,
    From the way that you paint your head
  In stripes of purple and red,
      With dots of yellow. 
      That proves you a fellow
  With a love of legitimate art. 
  “You’ve bitten a snake and are feeling bad”? 
      That’s very sad,
  But Longfellow’s words I beg to recall: 
  Your lot is the common lot of all. 
  “Horses are trees and the moon is a sneeze”? 
  That, I fancy, is just as you please.