Shapes of Clay Part 21

What? thirteen ladies--Jumping Jove! we know Them nearly all!--who gamble at a low And very shocking game of cards called "draw"!

O cracky, how they'll squirm! ha-ha! haw-haw!

Let's see what else (_wife snores_). Well, I'll be blest!

A woman doesn't understand a jest.

h.e.l.lo! What, what? the scurvy wretch proceeds To take a fling at _me_, condemn him! (_reads_): Tom Jonesmith--my name's Thomas, vulgar cad!--_Of the new Shavings Bank_--the man's gone mad!

That's libelous; I'll have him up for that--_Has had his corns cut_. Devil take the rat!

What business is 't of his, I'd like to know?

He didn't have to cut them. G.o.ds! what low And scurril things our papers have become!

You skim their contents and you get but sc.u.m.

Here, Mary, (_waking wife_) I've been attacked In this vile sheet. By Jove, it is a fact!

WIFE (_reading it_): How wicked! Who do you Suppose 't was wrote it?

JONESMITH: Who? why, who But Grip, the so-called funny man--he wrote Me up because I'd not discount his note.

(_Blushes like sunset at the hideous lie-- He'll think of one that's better by and by-- Throws down the paper on the floor, and treads A lively measure on it--kicks the shreds And patches all about the room, and still Performs his jig with unabated will._)

WIFE (_warbling sweetly, like an Elfland horn_): Dear, do be careful of that second corn.

STANLEY.

Noting some great man's composition vile: A head of wisdom and a heart of guile, A will to conquer and a soul to dare, Joined to the manners of a dancing bear, Fools unaccustomed to the wide survey Of various Nature's compensating sway, Untaught to separate the wheat and chaff, To praise the one and at the other laugh, Yearn all in vain and impotently seek Some flawless hero upon whom to wreak The sycophantic wors.h.i.+p of the weak.

Not so the wise, from superst.i.tion free, Who find small pleasure in the bended knee; Quick to discriminate 'twixt good and bad, And willing in the king to find the cad-- No reason seen why genius and conceit, The power to dazzle and the will to cheat, The love of daring and the love of gin, Should not dwell, peaceful, in a single skin.

To such, great Stanley, you're a hero still, Despite your cradling in a tub for swill.

Your peasant manners can't efface the mark Of light you drew across the Land of Dark.

In you the extremes of character are wed, To serve the quick and villify the dead.

Hero and clown! O, man of many sides, The Muse of Truth adores you and derides, And sheds, impartial, the revealing ray Upon your head of gold and feet of clay.

ONE OF THE UNFAIR s.e.x.

She stood at the ticket-seller's Serenely removing her glove, While hundreds of strugglers and yellers, And some that were good at a shove, Were cl.u.s.tered behind her like bats in a cave and unwilling to speak their love.

At night she still stood at that window Endeavoring her money to reach; The crowds right and left, how they sinned--O, How dreadfully sinned in their speech!

Ten miles either way they extended their lines, the historians teach.

She stands there to-day--legislation Has failed to remove her. The trains No longer pull up at that station; And over the ghastly remains Of the army that waited and died of old age fall the snows and the rains.

THE LORD'S PRAYER ON A COIN.

Upon this quarter-eagle's leveled face, The Lord's Prayer, legibly inscribed, I trace.

"Our Father which"--the p.r.o.noun there is funny, And shows the scribe to have addressed the money-- "Which art in Heaven"--an error this, no doubt: The preposition should be stricken out.

Needless to quote; I only have designed To praise the frankness of the pious mind Which thought it natural and right to join, With rare significancy, prayer and coin.

A LACKING FACTOR.

"You acted unwisely," I cried, "as you see By the outcome." He calmly eyed me: "When choosing the course of my action," said he, "I had not the outcome to guide me."

THE ROYAL JESTER.

Once on a time, so ancient poets sing, There reigned in G.o.dknowswhere a certain king.

So great a monarch ne'er before was seen: He was a hero, even to his queen, In whose respect he held so high a place That none was higher,--nay, not even the ace.

He was so just his Parliament declared Those subjects happy whom his laws had spared; So wise that none of the debating throng Had ever lived to prove him in the wrong; So good that Crime his anger never feared, And Beauty boldly plucked him by the beard; So brave that if his army got a beating None dared to face him when he was retreating.

This monarch kept a Fool to make his mirth, And loved him tenderly despite his worth.

Prompted by what caprice I cannot say, He called the Fool before the throne one day And to that jester seriously said: "I'll abdicate, and you shall reign instead, While I, attired in motley, will make sport To entertain your Majesty and Court."

'T was done and the Fool governed. He decreed The time of harvest and the time of seed; Ordered the rains and made the weather clear, And had a famine every second year; Altered the calendar to suit his freak, Ordaining six whole holidays a week; Religious creeds and sacred books prepared; Made war when angry and made peace when scared.

New taxes he inspired; new laws he made; Drowned those who broke them, who observed them, flayed, In short, he ruled so well that all who'd not Been starved, decapitated, hanged or shot Made the whole country with his praises ring, Declaring he was every inch a king; And the High Priest averred 't was very odd If one so competent were not a G.o.d.

Meantime, his master, now in motley clad, Wore such a visage, woeful, wan and sad, That some condoled with him as with a brother Who, having lost a wife, had got another.

Others, mistaking his profession, often Approached him to be measured for a coffin.

For years this highborn jester never broke The silence--he was pondering a joke.

At last, one day, in cap-and-bells arrayed, He strode into the Council and displayed A long, bright smile, that glittered in the gloom Like a gilt epithet within a tomb.

Posing his bauble like a leader's staff, To give the signal when (and why) to laugh, He brought it down with peremptory stroke And simultaneously cracked his joke!

I can't repeat it, friends. I ne'er could school Myself to quote from any other fool: A jest, if it were worse than mine, would start My tears; if better, it would break my heart.

So, if you please, I'll hold you but to state That royal Jester's melancholy fate.

The insulted nation, so the story goes, Rose as one man--the very dead arose, Springing indignant from the riven tomb, And babes unborn leapt swearing from the womb!

All to the Council Chamber clamoring went, By rage distracted and on vengeance bent.

In that vast hall, in due disorder laid, The tools of legislation were displayed, And the wild populace, its wrath to sate, Seized them and heaved them at the Jester's pate.

Mountains of writing paper; pools and seas Of ink, awaiting, to become decrees, Royal approval--and the same in stacks Lay ready for attachment, backed with wax; Pens to make laws, erasers to amend them; With mucilage convenient to extend them; Scissors for limiting their application, And acids to repeal all legislation-- These, flung as missiles till the air was dense, Were most offensive weapons of offense, And by their aid the Fool was nigh destroyed.

They ne'er had been so harmlessly employed.

Whelmed underneath a load of legal cap, His mouth egurgitating ink on tap, His eyelids mucilaginously sealed, His fertile head by scissors made to yield Abundant harvestage of ears, his pelt, In every wrinkle and on every welt, Quickset with pencil-points from feet to gills And thickly studded with a pride of quills, The royal Jester in the dreadful strife Was made (in short) an editor for life!

An idle tale, and yet a moral lurks In this as plainly as in greater works.

I shall not give it birth: one moral here Would die of loneliness within a year.

A CAREER IN LETTERS.

When Liberverm resigned the chair Of This or That in college, where For two decades he'd gorged his brain With more than it could well contain, In order to relieve the stress He took to writing for the press.

Then Pondronummus said, "I'll help This mine of talent to devel'p;"