Shapes of Clay | Page 4

ye editors and orators, consent to hear my lay! And a little while the digital and maxillary muscles And attend to what a Venerable Person has to say.
Cease your writing, cease your shouting, cease your wild unearthly lying; Cease to bandy such expressions as are never, never found In the letter of a lover; cease "exposing" and "replying"-- Let there be abated fury and a decrement of sound.
For to-morrow will be Monday and the fifth day of November-- Only day of opportunity before the final rush. _Carpe diem!_ go conciliate each person who's a member Of the other party--do it while you can without a blush.
"Lo! the time is close upon you when the madness of the season Having howled itself to silence, like a Minnesota 'clone, Will at last be superseded by the still, small voice of reason, When the whelpage of your folly you would willingly disown.
"Ah, 'tis mournful to consider what remorses will be thronging, With a consciousness of having been so ghastly indiscreet, When by accident untoward two ex-gentlemen belonging To the opposite political denominations meet!
"Yes, 'tis melancholy, truly, to forecast the fierce, unruly Supersurging of their blushes, like the flushes upon high When Aurora Borealis lights her circumpolar palace And in customary manner sets her banner in the sky.
"Each will think: 'This falsifier knows that I too am a liar. Curse him for a son of Satan, all unholily compound! Curse my leader for another! Curse that pelican, my mother! Would to God that I when little in my victual had been drowned!'"
Then that Venerable Person went away without returning And, the madness of the season having also taken flight, All the people soon were blushing like the skies to crimson burning When Aurora Borealis fires her premises by night.

NOVUM ORGANUM.
In Bacon see the culminating prime Of Anglo-Saxon intellect and crime. He dies and Nature, settling his affairs, Parts his endowments among us, his heirs: To every one a pinch of brain for seed, And, to develop it, a pinch of greed. Each thrifty heir, to make the gift suffice, Buries the talent to manure the vice.

GEOTHEOS.
As sweet as the look of a lover Saluting the eyes of a maid, That blossom to blue as the maid Is ablush to the glances above her, The sunshine is gilding the glade And lifting the lark out of shade.
Sing therefore high praises, and therefore Sing songs that are ancient as gold, Of Earth in her garments of gold; Nor ask of their meaning, nor wherefore They charm as of yore, for behold! The Earth is as fair as of old.
Sing songs of the pride of the mountains, And songs of the strength of the seas, And the fountains that fall to the seas From the hands of the hills, and the fountains That shine in the temples of trees, In valleys of roses and bees.
Sing songs that are dreamy and tender, Of slender Arabian palms, And shadows that circle the palms, Where caravans, veiled from the splendor, Are kneeling in blossoms and balms, In islands of infinite calms.
Barbaric, O Man, was thy runing When mountains were stained as with wine By the dawning of Time, and as wine Were the seas, yet its echoes are crooning, Achant in the gusty pine And the pulse of the poet's line.

YORICK.
Hard by an excavated street one sat In solitary session on the sand; And ever and anon he spake and spat And spake again--a yellow skull in hand, To which that retrospective Pioneer Addressed the few remarks that follow here:
"Who are you? Did you come 'der blains agross,' Or 'Horn aroundt'? In days o' '49 Did them thar eye-holes see the Southern Cross From the Antarctic Sea git up an' shine? Or did you drive a bull team 'all the way From Pike,' with Mr. Joseph Bowers?--say!
"Was you in Frisco when the water came Up to Montgum'ry street? and do you mind The time when Peters run the faro game-- Jim Peters from old Mississip--behind Wells Fargo's, where he subsequent was bust By Sandy, as regards both bank and crust?
"I wonder was you here when Casey shot James King o' William? And did you attend The neck-tie dance ensuin'? I did not, But j'ined the rush to Go Creek with my friend Ed'ard McGowan; for we was resolved In sech diversions not to be involved.
"Maybe I knowed you; seems to me I've seed Your face afore. I don't forget a face, But names I disremember--I'm that breed Of owls. I'm talking some'at into space An' maybe my remarks is too derned free, Seein' yer name is unbeknown to me.
"Ther' was a time, I reckon, when I knowed Nigh onto every dern galoot in town. That was as late as '50. Now she's growed Surprisin'! Yes, me an' my pardner, Brown,