Long walks at night--
that's what good for the soul:
peeking into windows
watching tired housewives
trying to fight off
their beer-maddened husbands.
And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass
''And if your Nancy frowns, my lad,
And scorns a jacket blue,
Just hoist your sails for other ports,
And find a maid more true.''
A famous conqueror, in battle brave,
Who robbed the cradle to supply the grave.
His reign laid quantities of human dust:
He fell upon the just and the unjust.
Erected to 'Boss' Shepherd by the dear
Good folk he lived and moved among in peace
Guarded on either hand by the police,
With soldiers in his front and in his rear.
'I never yet exactly could determine
Just how it is that the judicial ermine
Is kept so safely from predacious vermin.'
'It is not so, my friend: though in a garret
'Tis kept in camphor, and you often air it,
The vermin will get into it and wear it.'
A is defrauded of his land by B,
Who's driven from the premises by C.
D buys the place with coin of plundered E.
'That A's an Anarchist!' says F to G.
THROUGH one, years since hanged and forgot
Who stabbed backs by the Quarter,
Here lieth one who—while Time's stream
Runneth, as God hath taught her,
Bearing man's fame to men,—will have
His great name writ in water.
At threescore winters' end I died
A cheerless being sole and sad;
The nuptial knot I never tied,
And wish my father never had.
Painter, this likeness is too strong,
And we shall mourn the dead too long.
