Why mercy show when well we know that when our course is ended, we all must die—they'll hang us high, unshaven, undefended! Ah, wolves are we that roam the sea, and rend with savage fury; as soft our mind, our hearts as kind will be judge and jury! To rob and slay we go our way, our vessel low and raking; and men who hail our ebon sail may well be chilled and quaking! 

 (The Pirate of 1912) 

 My heart is light and glad tonight, and life seems good and merry; my coffer groans with golden bones I've pulled from the unwary. Ah, raiment fine and gems are mine, and costly bibs and tuckers; I got my rocks for mining stocks—I worked the jays and suckers. What though my game is going lame—a jolt the courts just gave me—my lawyers gay will find a way to beat the law and save me. I'll just lie low a year or so until the row blows over, then I'll come back to my old shack and be again in clover! I've fifty ways to work the jays and there's a fortune in it! The sucker crop will never stop, for one is born each minute. 

 

 Buccaneers 

 

 

 ST. PATRICK'S DAY 

 Away with tears and sordid fears, no trouble will we borrow, but shed our woes like winter clothes—it's Patrick's day tomorrow. With clubs and rakes we'll chase the snakes, and send the toads a-flying, and we'll be seen with ribbons green, all other hues decrying. In grass-green duds we'll plant the spuds, where they can do no growing; with flat and sharp we'll play the harp, and keep the music going. Then let us yell, for all is well, the world's devoid of sorrow; the toads are snared, the snakes are scared, it's Patrick's day tomorrow. 

 

 

 NAMING THE BABY 

 First I thought I'd call him Caesar; but my Uncle Ebenezer said that name was badly hoodoed—wasn't Julius Caesar slain? Then I said, "I'll call him Homer"; but my second cousin Gomer answered; "Homer was a pauper, and he wrote his rhymes in vain."  Long I pondered, worried greatly seeking names both sweet and stately, something proud and high and noble, such as ancient heroes bore.  "I shall call him Alexander—" but an innocent bystander muttered, "Aleck was a tyrant, and he splashed around in gore."  And my aunts said: "Only trust us, and we'll name him Charles Augustus, 

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