Poems From The Breakfast Table | Page 4

the headsman rose above the crowd.
His
falchion lighted with a sudden gleam,
As the pike's armor flashes in
the stream.
He sheathed his blade; he turned as if to go;
The victim
knelt, still waiting for the blow.
"Why strikest not? Perform thy
murderous act,"
The prisoner said. (His voice was slightly cracked.)

"Friend, I have struck," the artist straight replied;
"Wait but one
moment, and yourself decide."
He held his snuff-box,--"Now then, if
you please!"
The prisoner sniffed, and, with a crashing sneeze,
Off
his head tumbled,--bowled along the floor,--
Bounced down the
steps;--the prisoner said no more!
Woman! thy falchion is a glittering
eye;
If death lurk in it, oh how sweet to die!

Thou takest hearts as
Rudolph took the head;
We die with love, and never dream we're
dead!
LATTER-DAY WARNINGS

WHEN legislators keep the law,
When banks dispense with bolts and
looks,
When berries--whortle, rasp, and straw--
Grow bigger
downwards through the box,--
When he that selleth house or land
Shows leak in roof or flaw in
right,--
When haberdashers choose the stand
Whose window hath
the broadest light,--
When preachers tell us all they think,
And party leaders all they
mean,--
When what we pay for, that we drink,
From real grape and
coffee-bean,--
When lawyers take what they would give,
And doctors give what
they would take,--
When city fathers eat to live,
Save when they
fast for conscience' sake,--
When one that hath a horse on sale
Shall bring his merit to the proof,

Without a lie for every nail
That holds the iron on the hoof,--
When in the usual place for rips
Our gloves are stitched with special
care,
And guarded well the whalebone tips
Where first umbrellas
need repair,--
When Cuba's weeds have quite forgot
The power of suction to resist,

And claret-bottles harbor not
Such dimples as would hold your
fist,--
When publishers no longer steal,
And pay for what they stole
before,--
When the first locomotive's wheel
Rolls through the
Hoosac Tunnel's bore;--
Till then let Cumming blaze away,
And Miller's saints blow up the
globe;
But when you see that blessed day,
Then order your
ascension robe
ALBUM VERSES

WHEN Eve had led her lord away,
And Cain had killed his brother,

The stars and flowers, the poets say,
Agreed with one another
To cheat the cunning tempter's art,
And teach the race its duty,
By
keeping on its wicked heart
Their eyes of light and beauty.
A million sleepless lids, they say,
Will be at least a warning;
And
so the flowers would watch by day,
The stars from eve to morning.
On hill and prairie, field and lawn,
Their dewy eyes upturning,
The
flowers still watch from reddening dawn
Till western skies are
burning.
Alas! each hour of daylight tells
A tale of shame so crushing,
That
some turn white as sea-bleached shells,
And some are always
blushing.
But when the patient stars look down
On all their light discovers,

The traitor's smile, the murderer's frown,
The lips of lying lovers,
They try to shut their saddening eyes,
And in the vain endeavor
We
see them twinkling in the skies,
And so they wink forever.
A GOOD TIME GOING!
BRAVE singer of the coming time,
Sweet minstrel of the joyous
present,
Crowned with the noblest wreath of rhyme,
The holly-leaf
of Ayrshire's peasant,
Good by! Good by!--Our hearts and hands,

Our lips in honest Saxon phrases,
Cry, God be with him, till he stands

His feet among the English daisies!
'T is here we part;--for other eyes
The busy deck, the fluttering
streamer,
The dripping arms that plunge and rise,
The waves in
foam, the ship in tremor,
The kerchiefs waving from the pier,
The
cloudy pillar gliding o'er him,
The deep blue desert, lone and drear,


With heaven above and home before him!
His home!--the Western giant smiles,
And twirls the spotty globe to
find it;
This little speck the British Isles?
'T is but a freckle,--never
mind it!
He laughs, and all his prairies roll,
Each gurgling cataract
roars and chuckles,
And ridges stretched from pole to pole
Heave
till they crack their iron knuckles!
But Memory blushes at the sneer,
And Honor turns with frown
defiant,
And Freedom, leaning on her spear,
Laughs louder than the
laughing giant
"An islet is a world," she said,
"When glory with its
dust has blended,
And Britain keeps her noble dead
Till earth and
seas and skies are rended!"
Beneath each swinging forest-bough
Some arm as stout in death
reposes,--
From wave-washed foot to heaven-kissed brow
Her
valor's life-blood runs in roses;
Nay, let our brothers of the West

Write smiling in their florid pages,
One half her soil has walked the
rest
In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages!
Hugged in the clinging billow's clasp,
From sea-weed fringe to
mountain heather,
The British oak with rooted grasp
Her slender
handful holds together;--
With cliffs of white and bowers of green,

And Ocean narrowing to caress her,
And hills and threaded streams
between,--
Our little mother isle, God bless her!
In earth's broad temple where we stand,
Fanned by the eastern gales
that brought us,
We hold the missal in our hand,
Bright with the
lines our Mother taught us.
Where'er its blazoned page betrays
The
glistening links of gilded fetters,
Behold, the half-turned leaf displays

Her rubric stained in crimson letters!
Enough! To speed a parting friend
'T is vain alike to speak and
listen;--
Yet stay,--these feeble accents blend
With rays