Welcker, I’m told, can boast a father great
And honored in the service of the State. 
Public Instruction all his mind employs—­
He guides its methods and its wage enjoys. 
Prime Pedagogue, imperious and grand,
He waves his ferule o’er a studious land
Where humming youth, intent upon the page,
Thirsting for knowledge with a noble rage,
Drink dry the whole Pierian spring and ask
To slake their fervor at his private flask. 
Arrested by the terror of his frown,
The vaulting spit-ball drops untimely down;
The fly impaled on the tormenting pin
Stills in his awful glance its dizzy din;
Beneath that stern regard the chewing-gum
Which writhed and squeaked between the teeth is dumb;
Obedient to his will the dunce-cap flies
To perch upon the brows of the unwise;
The supple switch forsakes the parent wood
To settle where ’twill do the greatest good,
Puissant still, as when of old it strove
With Solomon for spitting on the stove
Learned Professor, variously great,
Guide, guardian, instructor of the State—­
Quick to discern and zealous to correct
The faults which mar the public intellect
From where of Siskiyou the northern bound
Is frozen eternal to the sunless ground
To where in San Diego’s torrid clime
The swarthy Greaser swelters in his grime—­
Beneath your stupid nose can you not see
The dunce whom once you dandled on your knee? 
O mighty master of a thousand schools,
Stop teaching wisdom, or stop breeding fools.

A COWARD

When Pickering, distressed by an “attack,”
Has the strange insolence to answer back
He hides behind a name that is a lie,
And out of shadow falters his reply. 
God knows him, though—­identified alike
By hardihood to rise and fear to strike,
And fitly to rebuke his sins decrees,
That, hide from others with what care he please,
Night sha’n’t be black enough nor earth so wide
That from himself himself can ever hide! 
Hard fate indeed to feel at every breath
His burden of identity till death!—­
No moment’s respite from the immortal load,
To think himself a serpent or a toad,
Or dream, with a divine, ecstatic glow,
He’s long been dead and canonized a crow!

TO MY LIARS

Attend, mine enemies of all degrees,
From sandlot orators and sandlot fleas
To fallen gentlemen and rising louts
Who babble slander at your drinking bouts,
And, filled with unfamiliar wine, begin
Lies drowned, ere born, in more congenial gin. 
But most attend, ye persons of the press
Who live (though why, yourselves alone can guess)
In hope deferred, ambitious still to shine
By hating me at half a cent a line—­
Like drones among the bees of brighter wing,
Sunless to shine and impotent to sting. 
To estimate in easy verse I’ll try
The controversial value of a lie. 
So lend your ears—­God knows you have enough!—­
I mean to teach, and if I can’t I’ll cuff.