Sir, what were _you_ without the press? What spreads The fame of your existence, once a week, From the Pacific Mail dock to the Heads, Warning the people you're about to wreak Upon the human ear your Sunday freak?-- Whereat the most betake them to their bed Though some prefer to slumber in the pews And nod assent to your hypnotic views. Unhappy man! can you not still your tongue When (like a luckless brat afflict with worms, By cruel fleas intolerably stung, Or with a pang in its small lap) it squirms? Still must it vulgarize your feats of lung? No preaching better were, the sun beneath, If you had nothing there behind your teeth. BORROWED BRAINS Writer folk across the bay Take the pains to see and say-- All their upward palms in air: "Joaquin Miller's cut his hair!" Hasten, hasten, writer folk-- In the gutters rake and poke, If by God's exceeding grace You may hit upon the place Where the barber threw at length Samson's literary strength. Find it, find it if you can; Happy the successful man! He has but to put one strand In his beaver's inner band And his intellect will soar As it never did before! While an inch of it remains He will noted be for brains, And at last ('twill so befall) Fit to cease to write at all. THE FYGHTYNGE SEVENTH It is the gallant Seventh-- It fyghteth faste and free! God wot the where it fyghteth I ne desyre to be. The Gonfalon it flyeth, Seeming a Flayme in Sky; The Bugel loud yblowen is, Which sayeth, Doe and dye! And (O good Saints defende us Agaynst the Woes of Warr) Drawn Tongues are flashing deadly To smyte the Foeman sore! With divers kinds of Riddance The smoaking Earth is wet, And all aflowe to seaward goe The Torrents wide of Sweat! The Thunder of the Captens, And eke the Shouting, mayketh Such horrid Din the Soule within The boddy of me quayketh! Who fyghteth the bold Seventh? What haughty Power defyes? Their Colonel 'tis they drubben sore, And dammen too his Eyes! INDICTED Dear Bruner, once we had a little talk (That is to say, 'twas I did all the talking) About the manner of your moral walk: How devious the trail you made in stalking, On level ground, your law-protected game-- "Another's Dollar" is, I think, its name. Your crooked course more recently is not So blamable; for, truly, you have stumbled On evil days; and 'tis your luckless lot To traverse spaces (with a spirit humbled, Contrite, dejected and divinely sad) Where, 'tis confessed, the walking's rather bad. Jordan, the song says, is a road (I thought It was a river) that is hard to travel; And Dublin, if you'd find it, must be sought Along a highway with more rocks than gravel. In difficulty neither can compete With that wherein you navigate your feet.