I. IN LATIN PROSE RECITATION
I love the tongue of Cicero
In moderate quantities, you know;
But listening for an hour and more
To Latin prosings is a bore.
When Pinguis rises to recite—
O Erebus and Ancient Night!
Chaos is come again: Old Sleep
Along the benches 'gins to creep.
What shall I do while Pinguis stands
And tells of Balbus's lifted hands;
Of Titus Manlius, noble youth,
And that G. Washington of truth,
Caius, who fibbed not even in jest
(Ne joco quidem)—and the rest?
What shall I do to pass the time?
Try my hand at making rhyme?
This text-book's fly-leaves smooth and white
My pencil's sharpened point invite.
Help, muse, thou whose Maeonian brook
Meanders through the Balbus book:
Thou who with pure mnemonic fire
That noble quatrain did'st inspire;
"By ut translate infinitive
With ask, command, advise, and strive:
But NEVER be this rule forgot—
Put ne for ut when there's a not."
Goddess, thou know'st I can't compose—
Not worth a rap—in Latin Prose.
(The exercises that I do
On the black-board get minus 2.
I saw the tutor with a frown
In his small book put this mark (x) down.)
So then—here goes in English verse:
It may be bad—it can't be worse.
II. A FISH STORY
A whale of high porosity,
And low specific gravity,
Dived down with much velocity
Beneath the sea's concavity.
But soon the weight of water
Squeezed in his fat immensity,
Which varied—as it ought to—
Inversely as his density.
It would have moved to pity
An Ogre or a Hessian,
To see poor Spermaceti
Thus suffering compression.
The while he lay a-roaring
In agonies gigantic,
The lamp-oil out came pouring
And greased the wide Atlantic.
(Would we'd been in the Navy,
And cruising there! Imagine us
All in a sea of gravy,
With billows oleaginous!)
At length old million-pounder,
Low on a bed of coral,
Gave his last dying flounder,
Whereto I pen this moral.
Moral
O let this tale dramatic
Anent this whale Norwegian,
And pressures hydrostatic
Warn you, my young collegian,
That down-compelling forces
Increase as you get deeper;
The lower down your course is,
The upward path's the steeper.
III. SCHOOLMASTER DICK
"Dic per omnes
Te deos oro."
HORACE. ODES. LIBER I. CARMEN VIII.
Schoolmaster Dick
Was choleric.
One morning as he lay in bed,
A noisy fly about his head
Made humming,—
Now coming,
Now going. Ah! poor Dick!
How the beast's claws did stick
To thy wide nose.
Red as a rose
With bumming!
At length he rose and poised full high
His fist, and aimed it at the fly,
Which, like Giles Scroggins' father's ghost,
Was standing tall on the bed-post.
Fierce he broke forth: "Caeruleo-flagon!
Purpureal-flask! You cursed bug-dragon!
By Beelzebub! I will you throttle,
You devil of a big blue-bottle!"
Wild he struck out, his wrath to wreak:
0 grief! the wily brute did sneak
All deftly out betwixt his hand
And that fell wood where it did land.
Now, Richard, rub thy knuckles sore;
And smite at flies on posts no more.
IV. THE RESTLESSNESS OF THE FIG-HORSE
O fig-horse by the Cooper Institute,
Why dost thou, like a wild, unlassoed brute,
Start and endanger thy good master's fruit?
Behold yon peanut-horse, who doth not vary
His pose, nor shake his maneless head contrary;
But stands as statue-like and stationary
As that bronze steed in Union Square, whereon
Rampeth the dignified G. Washington
Waving benignant benediction.
Peace, aged steed! The bit thou canst not champ
With toothless gums; thou art too old to ramp:
To arch thy ancient neck would give thee cramp.
Say, dost thou scorn to vend the humble pie,
Or draw the car "where sweets compacted lie"?
For shame! Ποποι, proud charger! Fie, O fie!
Perchance Pegasian instincts in thy blood
Do cause thee thus to paw the pavement mud:—
Then spread thy wings above the ocean sud.
So am I sick of these confections sweet:
Blow, wuthering winds; November rain-floods beat;
Welcome, loud northers and the winter's sleet!
V. THE UNPSYCHOLOGICAL BABY
After Dr. Holland
Who can tell what the baby thinks
When its warm and sugared pap it drinks,
Gurgles and sprawls and stares and blinks,
Works its fingers and eke its toes,
While mamma wipes its small snub nose;
Gums on its ring and drules on its bib
And falls on its head from the open crib;
Raises a bump on its cartilage bald
And goes to sleep when enough it has squalled?
VI. THRENODY ON THREE WORTHY CHARACTERS
Dim is my damp eye
For thee, O Sampi:
Lo! here I drop a
Tear for Koppa;
Gone, too, art thou,
Departed Vau;
(Ah! letter sweet,
Now obsolete.)
Ye one-two-three
All vanished be,
Swallowed by Time's much-gulping sea.
Unfortunate triad,
Lost like the Pleiad,
Leaving the seven
Lorn in Night's heaven.
"F"
But thou, Digamma—
Chiefly for thee
We wail and clamour
In threnody.
Old Hell, thy gammer,
Swallowed thee whole;
Yet still thy soul
Doth haunt this grammar—
A ghostly V
For whom Prof. Hadley
Moaneth madly
And in each dark hiatus sadly
Listens for thee—
Ever for thee.
VII. TO MÆCENAS
Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Apollo
G.Horne, you seem to think, by __
That Homer doesn't ever nod.
You'll find, if once your hand you try,
That writing endless poetry
*'s not half so easy as you think.
It needs good smear,† cigars, and drink
To get a high-toned frenzy up:
The Muse is dull without the cup.
Who eats at Commons Club his dinner
Will find his wit grow thin and thinner.
Mæcenas, set 'em‡ upward straight,
Or for your odes in vain you'll wait.
* Cf. Horace. . . . uxorius amnis.
† Academice—food.
‡ Pocula largiter superposuit.
VIII. POETICAL EPISTLE TO G. HORNE
I don't much like this "Love as a Law;"§
Leastwise, the title's stupid
And mixes things: who ever saw,
For instance, "Coke on Cupid"?
Suppose you mention to Prof. P.,
That when we buy our next book,
You think "Laus Veneris" would be
A very jolly text-book.
It treats of Laus and treats of Love;
And though it doesn't say
That love is law and laws are love,
Well—that's C. Swinburne's way.
§ The Law of Love and Love as a Law,
by President Mark Hopkins.
IX. PRIDE GOETH BEFORE A FALL
Oh, glee!
How he
Across the street doth slip
And on the curb-stone cut his cursed lip!
Erstwhiles
Slow smiles
Of much contempt there sat,
The while his eyes laughed scorn at my good hat.
Excellent hat—
O hat most fat,
Now feed thy hatred on him, as he lies
Low in the gutter, while the laughter dies
Away from lips and out of mud-splashed eyes.
