Some one (’tis hardly new) has oddly said
The color of a trumpet’s blare is red;
And Joseph Emmett thinks the crimson shame
On woman’s cheek a trumpet-note of fame. 
The more the red storm rises round her nose—­
The more her eyes averted seek her toes,
He fancies all the louder he can hear
The tube resounding in his spacious ear,
And, all his varied talents to exert,
Darkens his dullness to display his dirt. 
And when the gallery’s indecent crowd,
And gentlemen below, with hisses loud,
In hot contention (these his art to crown,
And those his naked nastiness to drown)
Make such a din that cheeks erewhile aflame
Grow white and in their fear forget their shame,
With impudence imperial, sublime,
Unmoved, the patient actor bides his time,
Till storm and counter-storm are both allayed,
Like donkeys, each by t’other one outbrayed. 
When all the place is silent as a mouse
One slow, suggestive gesture clears the house!

FAMINE’S REALM

To him in whom the love of Nature has
Imperfectly supplanted the desire
And dread necessity of food, your shore,
Fair Oakland, is a terror.  Over all
Your sunny level, from Tamaletown
To where the Pestuary’s fragrant slime,
With dead dogs studded, bears its ailing fleet,
Broods the still menace of starvation.  Bones
Of men and women bleach along the ways
And pampered vultures sleep upon the trees. 
It is a land of death, and Famine there
Holds sovereignty; though some there be her sway
Who challenge, and intrenched in larders live,
Drawing their sustentation from abroad. 
But woe to him, the stranger!  He shall die
As die the early righteous in the bud
And promise of their prime.  He, venturesome
To penetrate the wilds rectangular
Of grass-grown ways luxuriant of blooms,
Frequented of the bee and of the blithe,
Bold squirrel, strays with heedless feet afar
From human habitation and is lost
In mid-Broadway.  There hunger seizes him,
And (careless man! deeming God’s providence
Extends so far) he has not wherewithal
To bate its urgency.  Then, lo! appears
A mealery—­a restaurant—­a place
Where poison battles famine, and the two,
Like fish-hawks warring in the upper sky
For that which one has taken from the deep,
Manage between them to dispatch the prey. 
He enters and leaves hope behind.  There ends
His history.  Anon his bones, clean-picked
By buzzards (with the bones himself had picked,
Incautious) line the highway.  O, my friends,
Of all felonious and deadlywise
Devices of the Enemy of Souls,
Planted along the ways of life to snare
Man’s mortal and immortal part alike,
The Oakland restaurant is chief.  It lives
That man may die.  It flourishes that life
May wither.  Its foundation stones repose
On human hearts and hopes.  I’ve seen in