Liars for witnesses; for lawyers brutes
Who lose their tempers to retrieve their
suits;
Cowards for jurors; and for judge a clown
Who ne’er took up the law, yet lays
it down;
Justice denied, authority abused,
And the one honest person the accused—
Thy courts, my country, all these awful
years,
Move fools to laughter and the wise to
tears.
AN EPITAPH.
Here lies Greer Harrison, a well cracked
louse—
So small a tenant of so big a house!
He joyed in fighting with his eyes (his
fist
Prudently pendent from a peaceful wrist)
And loved to loll on the Parnassian mount,
His pen to suck and all his thumbs to
count,—
What poetry he’d written but for
lack
Of skill, when he had counted, to count
back!
Alas, no more he’ll climb the sacred
steep
To wake the lyre and put the world to
sleep!
To his rapt lip his soul no longer springs
And like a jaybird from a knot-hole sings.
No more the clubmen, pickled with his
wine,
Spread wide their ears and hiccough “That’s
divine!”
The genius of his purse no longer draws
The pleasing thunders of a paid applause.
All silent now, nor sound nor sense remains,
Though riddances of worms improve his
brains.
All his no talents to the earth revert,
And Fame concludes the record: “Dirt
to dirt!”
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