Benoni Dunn
I sat on a worm fence talking
With one of the Bear Creek boys,
When all the woods were ringing
With the blue jay's jubilant noise.
Prairie and timber were glorious
In the love of the hot young sun,
But a philosophic gloom possessed
The soul of Benoni Dunn.
"Nothin' in all this 'varsal yerth
Is like what it ort to be,
I've give up tryin' to see the nub
It's too hefty a job fer me.
The weaker a feller's stummick may be,
The bigger his dinner, you bet,
And the more he don't care a damn for cash,
The richer he's sure to get.
"Thar's old Brads got a pretty young wife
And the biggest house in Pike
No chick nor child says he's sixty-two,
But he's eighty-two more like.
I'low God thinks it a derned good joke-
The way he tries it on-
To send a plenty of hazel-nuts
To folks with their back teeth gone.
"I ort to be in Congress;
I would ef I'd went to school.
That's Colonel Scrubb our member
He's jest a nateral fool.
When he come here, Lord! he didn't know
Peach blow from a dogwood blossom,
And the derned galoot owned up to me
That he never seed a 'possum!
"Everything works contráry-
You never knows what to do:
Ef I sow in wheat I'll wish it was corn
Afore the fall is through.
And talk about pleasure ef I was axed
The thing that most I love,
I'd say it's gingerbread and that
I git the littlest uv.
"What is the use of livin'
Where everything goes skew-haw,
Where you starve ef you keep the Commandments,
And hang ef you break the law.
I've give up tryin' to see the nub
Uv what we was meant to be;
The more I study, the more I don't know-
It's too hefty a job fer me."
And this was the sum of the thinking
Of tall Benoni Dunn,
While gay in weeds his cornfield laughed
In the light of the kindly sun.
Ruminant thus he maundered,
With a scowl on his tangled brow,
With gaps in his fence, and hate in his heart,
And rust on his idle plough.
The Curse Of Hungary
King Saloman looked from his donjon bars,
Where the Danube clamors through sedge and sand,
And he cursed with a curse his revolting land,-
With a king's deep curse of treason and wars.
He said: "May this false land know no truth!
May the good hearts die and the bad ones flourish,
And a greed of glory but live to nourish
Envy and hate in its restless youth.
"In the barren soil may the ploughshare rust,
While the sword grows bright with its fatal labor,
And blackens between each man and neighbor
The perilous cloud of a vague distrust!
"Be the noble idle, the peasant in thrall,
And each to the other as unknown things,
That with links of hatred and pride the kings
May forge firm fetters through each for all!
"May a king wrong them as they wronged their king!
May he wring their hearts as they wrung mine,
Till they pour their blood for his revels like wine,
And to women and monks their birthright fling!"
The mad king died; but the rushing river
Still brawls by the spot where his donjon stands,
And its swift waves sigh to the conscious sands
That the curse of King Saloman works forever.
For flowing by Pressbourg they heard the cheers
Ring out from the leal and cheated hearts
That were caught and chained by Theresa's arts,-
A man's cool head and a girl's hot tears!
And a star, scarce risen, they saw decline,
Where Orsova's hills looked coldly down,
As Kossuth buried the Iron Crown
And fled in the dark to the Turkish line.
And latest they saw in the summer glare
The Magyar nobles in pomp arrayed,
To shout as they saw, with his unfleshed blade,
A Hapsburg beating the harmless air.
But ever the same sad play they saw,
The same weak worship of sword and crown,
The noble crushing the humble down,
And moulding Wrong to a monstrous Law.
The donjon stands by the turbid river,
But Time is crumbling its battered towers;
And the slow light withers a despot's powers,
And a mad king's curse is not forever!
