Stoneman In Heaven

The Seraphs came to Christ, and said: 'Behold!
The man, presumptuous and overbold,
Who boasted that his mercy could excel
Thine own, is dead and on his way to Hell.'

Gravely the Saviour asked: 'What did he do
To make his impious assertion true?'

'He was a Governor, releasing all
The vilest felons ever held in thrall.
No other mortal, since the dawn of time,
Has ever pardoned such a mass of crime!'

Christ smiled benignly on the Seraphim:
'Yet I am victor, for I pardon _him_.'

Daughter of God! Audacity divine
Of clowns the terror and of brains the sign
Not thou the inspirer of the rushing fool,
Not thine of idiots the vocal drool:
Thy bastard sister of the brow of brass,
Presumption, actuates the charging ass.
Sky-born Audacity! of thee who sings
Should strike with freer hand than mine the strings;
The notes should mount on pinions true and strong,
For thou, the subject shouldst sustain the song,
Till angels lean from Heaven, a breathless throng!
Alas! with reeling heads and wavering tails,
They (notes, not angels) dropp and the hymn fails;
The minstrel's tender fingers and his thumbs
Are torn to rags upon the lyre he strums.
Have done! the lofty thesis makes demand
For stronger voices and a harder hand:
Night-howling apes to make the notes aspire,
And Poet Riley's fist to slug the rebel wire!

'Black Bart, Po8'

Welcome, good friend; as you have served your term,
And found the joy of crime to be a fiction,
I hope you'll hold your present faith, stand firm
And not again be open to conviction.

Your sins, though scarlet once, are now as wool:
You've made atonement for all past offenses,
And conjugated-'twas an awful pull!-
The verb 'to pay' in all its moods and tenses.

You were a dreadful criminal-by Heaven,
I think there never was a man so sinful!
We've all a pinch or two of Satan's leaven,
But you appeared to have an even skinful.

Earth shuddered with aversion at your name;
Rivers fled backward, gravitation scorning;
The sea and sky, from thinking on your shame,
Grew lobster-red at eve and in the morning.

But still red-handed at your horrid trade
You wrought, to reason deaf, and to compassion.
But now with gods and men your peace is made
I beg you to be good and in the fashion.

What's that?-you 'ne'er again will rob a stage'?
What! did you do so? Faith, I didn't know it.
Was _that_ what threw poor Themis in a rage?
I thought you were convicted as a poet!

I own it was a comfort to my soul,
And soothed it better than the deepest curses,
To think they'd got one poet in a hole
Where, though he wrote, he could not print, his verses.

I thought that Welcker, Plunkett, Brooks, and all
The ghastly crew who always are begriming
With villain couplets every page and wall,
Might be arrested and 'run in' for rhyming.

And then Parnassus would be left to me,
And Pegasus should bear me up it gaily,
Nor down a steep place run into the sea,
As now he must be tempted to do daily.

Well, grab the lyre-strings, hearties, and begin:
Bawl your harsh souls all out upon the gravel.
I must endure you, for you'll never sin
By robbing coaches, until dead men travel.

A Vision Of Climate

I dreamed that I was poor and sick and sad,
Broken in hope and weary of my life;
My ventures all miscarrying-naught had
For all my labor in the heat and strife.
And in my heart some certain thoughts were rife
Of an unsummoned exit. As I lay
Considering my bitter state, I cried:
'Alas! that hither I did ever stray.
Better in some fair country to have died
Than live in such a land, where Fortune never
(Unless he be successful) crowns Endeavor.'

Then, even as I lamented, lo! there came
A troop of Presences-I knew not whence
Nor what they were: thought cannot rightly name
What's known through spiritual evidence,
Reported not by gross material sense.
'Why come ye here?' I seemed to cry (though naught
My sleeping tongue did utter) to the first
'What are ye?-with what woful message fraught?
Ye have a ghastly look, as ye had burst
Some sepulcher in memory. Weird creatures,
I'm sure I'd know you if ye had but features.'

Some subtle organ noted the reply
(Inaudible to ear of flesh the tone):
'The Finest Climate in the World am I,
From Siskiyou to San Diego known
From the Sierra to the sea. The zone
Called semi-tropical I've pulled about
And placed it where it does most good, I trust.
I shake my never-failing bounty out
Alike upon the just and the unjust.'
'That's very true,' said I, 'but when 'tis shaken
My share by the unjust is ever taken.'

'Permit me,' it resumed, 'now to present
My eldest son, the Champagne Atmosphere,
And others to rebuke your discontent
The Mammoth Squash, Strawberry All the Year,
The fair No Lightning-flashing only here
The Wholesome Earthquake and Italian Sky,
With its Unstriking Sun; and last, not least,
The Compos Mentis Dog. Now, ingrate, try
To bring a better stomach to the feast:
When Nature makes a dance and pays the piper,
To be unhappy is to be a viper!'

'Why, yet,' said I, 'with all your blessings fine
(And Heaven forbid that I should speak them ill)
I yet am poor and sick and sad. Ye shine
With more of splendor than of heat: for still,
Although my will is warm, my bones are chill.'
'Then warm you with enthusiasm's blaze
Fortune waits not on toil,' they cried; 'O then
Join the wild chorus clamoring our praise
Throw up your beaver and throw down you pen!'
'Begone!' I shouted. They bewent, a-smirking,
And I, awakening, fell straight a-working.