is) you contracted for A mess of pottage. In civil life you were, we read     (And our respect increases)   A man of peace—a man, indeed, Of thirty pieces. To paying taxes when you turned Your mind, or what you call so, A wide celebrity you earned—       Saphira also. In every age, by various names, You've won renown in story, But on your present record flames A greater glory. Cain, Esau, and Iscariot, too, And Ananias, likewise, Each had peculiar powers, but who Could lie as Mike lies? 

 

 THE BOSS'S CHOICE

   Listen to his wild romances:   He advances foolish fancies, Each expounded as his "view"—                     Gu. In his brain's opacous clot, ah He has got a maggot! What a Man with "views" to overwhelm us!—              Gulielmus. Hear his demagogic clamor—   Hear him stammer in his grammar! Teaching, he will learn to spell—         Gulielmus L. Slave who paid the price demanded—   With two-handed iron branded By the boss—pray cease to dose us, Gulielmus L. Jocosus. 

 

 A MERCIFUL GOVERNOR

   Standing within the triple wall of Hell, And flattening his nose against a grate Behind whose brazen bars he'd had to dwell A thousand million ages to that date, Stoneman bewailed his melancholy fate, And his big tear-drops, boiling as they fell, Had worn between his feet, the record mentions, A deep depression in the "good intentions."    Imperfectly by memory taught how—     For prayer in Hell is a lost art—he prayed, Uplifting his incinerated brow And flaming hands in supplication's aid.   "O grant," he cried, "my torment may be stayed—   In mercy, some short breathing spell allow! If one good deed I did before my ghosting, Spare me and give Delmas a double roasting."    Breathing a holy harmony in Hell, Down through the appalling clamors of the place, Charming them all to willing concord, fell A Voice ineffable and full of grace:   "Because of all the law-defying race One single malefactor of the cell Thou didst not free from his incarceration, Take thou ten thousand years of condonation."    Back from their fastenings began to shoot The rusted bolts; with dreadful roar, the gate Laboriously turned; and, black with soot, The extinguished spirit passed that awful strait, And as he legged it into space, elate, Muttered: "Yes, I remember that galoot—   I'd signed his pardon, ready to allot it, But stuck it in my desk and quite forgot it." 

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