Shapes of Clay | Page 4

what the physician said? What! "Out of danger?" Then,
by Heaven, I'm dead!

AT THE CLOSE OF THE CANVASS.
'Twas a Venerable Person, whom I met one Sunday morning, All
appareled as a prophet of a melancholy sect; And in a jeremaid of
objurgatory warning He lifted up his jodel to the following effect:
O ye sanguinary statesmen, intermit your verbal tussles O 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superseded by the still, small voice of reason, When the whelpage of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