False to his art and to the high command God laid upon him, Markham's rebel hand Beats all in vain the harp he touched before: It yields a jingle and it yields no more. No more the strings beneath his finger-tips Sing harmonies divine. No more his lips, Touched with a living coal from sacred fires, Lead the sweet chorus of the golden wires. The voice is raucous and the phrases squeak; They labor, they complain, they sweat, they reek! The more the wayward, disobedient song Errs from the right to celebrate the wrong, More diligently still the singer strums, To drown the horrid sound, with all his thumbs. Gods, what a spectacle! The angels lean Out of high Heaven to view the sorry scene, And Israfel, "whose heart-strings are a lute," Though now compassion makes their music mute, Among the weeping company appears, Pearls in his eyes and cotton in his ears. AN OFFER OF MARRIAGE. Once I "dipt into the future far as human eye could see," And saw--it was not Sandow, nor John Sullivan, but she-- The Emancipated Woman, who was weeping as she ran Here and there for the discovery of Expurgated Man. But the sun of Evolution ever rose and ever set, And that tardiest of mortals hadn't evoluted yet. Hence the tears that she cascaded, hence the sighs that tore apart All the tendinous connections of her indurated heart. Cried Emancipated Woman, as she wearied of the search: "In Advancing I have left myself distinctly in the lurch! Seeking still a worthy partner, from the land of brutes and dudes I have penetrated rashly into manless solitudes. Now without a mate of any kind where am I?--that's to say, Where shall I be to-morrow?--where exert my rightful sway And the purifying strength of my emancipated mind? Can solitude be lifted up, vacuity refined? Calling, calling from the shadows in the rear of my Advance-- From the Region of Unprogress in the Dark Domain of Chance-- Long I heard the Unevolvable beseeching my return To share the degradation he's reluctant to unlearn. But I fancy I detected--though I pray it wasn't that-- A low reverberation, like an echo in a hat. So I've held my way regardless, evoluting year by year, Till I'm what you now behold me--or would if you were here-- A condensed Emancipation and a Purifier proud An Independent Entity appropriately loud! Independent? Yes, in spirit, but (O, woful, woful state!) Doomed to premature extinction by privation of a mate-- To extinction or reversion, for Unexpurgated Man Still awaits me in the backward if I sicken of the van. O the horrible dilemma!--to be odiously linked With an Undeveloped Species, or become a Type Extinct!"