If the wicked gods were willing
(Pray it never may be true!)
That a universal chilling
Should ensue
Of the sentiment of loving,—
If they made a great undoing
Of the plan of turtle-doving,
Then farewell all poet-lore,
Evermore.
If there were no more of billing
There would be no more of
cooing
And we all should be but owls—
Lonely fowls
Blinking wonderfully wise,
With our great round eyes—
Sitting singly in the gloaming and no
longer two and two,
As unwilling to be wedded as unpracticed
how to woo;
With regard to being mated,
Asking still with aggravated
Ungrammatical acerbity: “To
who? To who?”
TO A CENSOR.
“The delay granted by the weakness
and good nature of
our judges is responsible for half the
murders.”—Daily Newspaper.
Delay responsible? Why, then; my
friend,
Impeach Delay and you will make an end.
Thrust vile Delay in jail and let it rot
For doing all the things that it should
not.
Put not good-natured judges under bond,
But make Delay in damages respond.
Minos, Aeacus, Rhadamanthus, rolled
Into one pitiless, unsmiling scold—
Unsparing censor, be your thongs uncurled
To “lash the rascals naked through
the world.”
The rascals? Nay, Rascality’s
the thing
Above whose back your knotted scourges
sing.
Your satire, truly, like a razor
keen,
“Wounds with a touch that’s
neither felt nor seen;”
For naught that you assail with falchion
free
Has either nerves to feel or eyes to see.
Against abstractions evermore you charge
You hack no helmet and you need no targe.
That wickedness is wrong and sin a vice,
That wrong’s not right and foulness
never nice,
Fearless affirm. All consequences
dare:
Smite the offense and the offender spare.
When Ananias and Sapphira lied
Falsehood, had you been there, had surely
died.
When money-changers in the Temple sat,
At money-changing you’d have whirled
the “cat”
(That John-the-Baptist of the modern pen)
And all the brokers would have cried amen!
Good friend, if any judge deserve your
blame
Have you no courage, or has he no name?
Upon his method will you wreak your wrath,
Himself all unmolested in his path?
Fall to! fall to!—your club
no longer draw
To beat the air or flail a man of straw.
Scorn to do justice like the Saxon thrall
Who cuffed the offender’s shadow
on a wall.
Let rascals in the flesh attest your zeal—
Knocked on the mazzard or tripped up at
heel!
We know that judges are corrupt.
We know
That crimes are lively and that laws are
slow.
We know that lawyers lie and doctors slay;
That priests and preachers are but birds
of pray;
That merchants cheat and journalists for
gold
Flatter the vicious while at vice they
scold.
’Tis all familiar as the simple
lore
That two policemen and two thieves make
four.
But since, while some are wicked, some
are good,
(As trees may differ though they all are
wood)
Names, here and there, to show whose head
is hit,
The bad would sentence and the good acquit.
In sparing everybody none you spare:
Rebukes most personal are least unfair.
To fire at random if you still prefer,
And swear at Dog but never kick a cur,
Permit me yet one ultimate appeal
To something that you understand and feel:
Let thrift and vanity your heart persuade—
You might be read if you would learn your
trade.
Good brother cynics (you have doubtless
guessed
Not one of you but all are here addressed)
Remember this: the shaft that seeks
a heart
Draws all eyes after it; an idle dart
Shot at some shadow flutters o’er
the green,
Its flight unheeded and its fall unseen.
