ONE MOOD’S EXPRESSION.
See, Lord, fanatics all arrayed
For revolution!
To foil their villainous crusade
Unsheathe again the sacred blade
Of persecution.
What though through long disuse ’t
is grown
A trifle rusty?
’Gainst modern heresy, whose bone
Is rotten, and the flesh fly-blown,
It still is trusty.
Of sterner stuff thine ancient foes,
Unapprehensive,
Sprang forth to meet thy biting blows;
Our zealots chiefly to the nose
Assume the offensive.
Then wield the blade their necks to hack,
Nor ever spare
one.
Thy crowns of martyrdom unpack,
But see that every martyr lack
The head to wear
one.
SOMETHING IN THE PAPERS.
“What’s in the paper?”
Oh, it’s dev’lish dull:
There’s nothing happening at all—a
lull
After the war-storm. Mr. Someone’s
wife
Killed by her lover with, I think, a knife.
A fire on Blank Street and some babies—one,
Two, three or four, I don’t remember,
done
To quite a delicate and lovely brown.
A husband shot by woman of the town—
The same old story. Shipwreck somewhere
south.
The crew, all saved—or lost.
Uncommon drouth
Makes hundreds homeless up the River Mud—
Though, come to think, I guess it was
a flood.
’T is feared some bank will burst—or
else it won’t
They always burst, I fancy—or
they don’t;
Who cares a cent?—the banker
pays his coin
And takes his chances: bullet in
the groin—
But that’s another item—suicide—
Fool lost his money (serve him right)
and died.
Heigh-ho! there’s noth—Jerusalem!
what’s this:
Tom Jones has failed! My God, what
an abyss
Of ruin!—owes me seven hundred
clear!
Was ever such a damned disastrous year!
IN THE BINNACLE.
[The Church possesses the unerring compass whose needle points directly and persistently to the star of the eternal law of God.—Religious Weekly.]
The Church’s compass, if you please,
Has two or three (or more) degrees
Of variation;
And many a soul has gone to grief
On this or that or t’other reef
Through faith unreckoning or brief
Miscalculation.
Misguidance is of perils chief
To navigation.
The obsequious thing makes, too, you’ll
mark,
Obeisance through a little arc
Of declination;
For Satan, fearing witches, drew
From Death’s pale horse, one day,
a shoe,
And nailed it to his door to undo
Their machination.
Since then the needle dips to woo
His habitation.
HUMILITY.
Great poets fire the world with fagots
big
That make a crackling racket,
But I’m content with but a whispering
twig
To warm some single jacket.