So trust thy friends, whose babbling tongues would charm The lifted sabre from thy foeman's arm, Thy torches ready for the answering peal From bellowing fort and thunder-freighted keel! THE MORAL BULLY. YON whey-faced brother, who delights to wear Seems of the sort that in a crowded place A timid creature, lax of knee and hip, The Holy-Week of Protestants convenes ; Whom John, obedient to his master's sign, While Peter, glistening with luxurious scorn, And the laced high-lows which they call their boots. Be slow to judge, and slower to despise, Behold the master that can tame thee down The MORAL BULLY, though he never swears, Nor kicks intruders down his entry stairs, Though meekness plants his backward-sloping hat, And non-resistance ties his white cravat, Though his black broadcloth glories to be seen In the same plight with Shylock's gaberdine, Hugs the same passion to his narrow breast That heaves the cuirass on the trooper's chest, Hears the same hell-hounds yelling in his rear That chase from port the maddened buccaneer, Feels the same comfort while his acrid words Heaven keep us all! Is every rascal clown From lack of marrow or the coins to pay, THE MIND'S DIET. No life worth naming ever comes to good But cool Magendie proves beyond a doubt, No reasoning natures find it safe to feed, For their sole diet, on a single creed; It spoils their eyeballs while it spares their tongues, And starves the heart to feed the noisy lungs. When the first larvæ on the elm are seen, The crawling wretches, like its leaves, are green; Ere chill October shakes the latest down, They, like the foliage, change their tint to brown; On the blue flower a bluer flower you spy, You stretch to pluck it 't is a butterfly; The flattened tree-toads so resemble bark, They're hard to find as Ethiops in the dark; Nay, on one truth, will creatures get its dye; Except when squabbling turns them black and blue! OUR LIMITATIONS. WE trust and fear, we question and believe, Eternal Truth! beyond our hopes and fears Sweep the vast orbits of thy myriad spheres! From age to age, while History carves sublime On her waste rock the flaming curves of time, How the wild swayings of our planet show That worlds unseen surround the world we know! |