EXPOSITOR VERITATIS

I Slept, and, waking in the years to be,
  Heard voices, and approaching whence they came,
Listened indifferently where a key
  Had lately been removed.  An ancient dame
Said to her daughter:  “Go to yonder caddy
And get some emery to scour your daddy.”

And then I knew—­some intuition said—­
  That tombs were not and men had cleared their shelves
Of urns; and the electro-plated dead
  Stood pedestaled as statues of themselves. 
With famous dead men all the public places
Were thronged, and some in piles awaited bases.

One mighty structure’s high facade alone
Contained a single monumental niche,
Where, central in that steep expanse of stone,
Gleamed the familiar form of Thomas Fitch. 
A man cried:  “Lo!  Truth’s temple and its founder!”
Then gravely added:  “I’m her chief expounder.”

TO “COLONEL” DAN.  BURNS

They say, my lord, that you’re a Warwick.  Well,
  The title’s an absurd one, I believe: 
You make no kings, you have no kings to sell,
  Though really ’twere easy to conceive
  You stuffing half-a-dozen up your sleeve. 
No, you’re no Warwick, skillful from the shell
To hatch out sovereigns.  On a mare’s nest, maybe,
You’d incubate a little jackass baby.

I fancy, too, that it is naught but stuff,
  This “power” that you’re said to be “behind
The throne.”  I’m sure ’twere accurate enough
  To represent you simply as inclined
  To push poor Markham (ailing in his mind
And body, which were never very tough)
Round in an invalid’s wheeled chair.  Such menial
Employment to low natures is congenial.

No, Dan, you’re an impostor every way: 
  A human bubble, for “the earth,” you know,
“Hath bubbles, as the water hath.”  Some day
  Some careless hand will prick your film, and O,
  How utterly you’ll vanish!  Daniel, throw
(As fallen Woolsey might to Cromwell say)
Your curst ambition to the pigs—­though truly
’Twould make them greater pigs, and more unruly.

GEORGE A. KNIGHT

Attorney Knight, it happens so sometimes
That lawyers, justifying cut-throats’ crimes
For hire—­calumniating, too, for gold,
The dead, dumb victims cruelly unsouled—­
Speak, through the press, to a tribunal far
More honorable than their Honors are,—­
A court that sits not with assenting smile
While living rogues dead gentleman revile,—­
A court where scoundrel ethics of your trade
Confuse no judgment and no cheating aid,—­
The Court of Honest Souls, where you in vain
May plead your right to falsify for gain,
Sternly reminded if a man engage
To serve assassins for the liar’s wage,
His mouth with vilifying falsehoods crammed,
He’s twice detestable and doubly damned!