Just then Zeus snored,—­the Eagle drew
  His head the wing from under;
Zeus snored,—­o’er startled Greece there flew
  The many-volumed thunder. 
Some augurs counted nine, some, ten;
  Some said ’twas war, some, famine;
And all, that other-minded men
  Would get a precious——.

Proud Pallas sighed, ’It will not do;
  Against the Muse I’ve sinned, oh!’
And her torn rhymes sent flying through
  Olympus’s back window. 
Then, packing up a peplus clean,
  She took the shortest path thence,
And opened, with a mind serene,
  A Sunday-school in Athens.

The verses?  Some in ocean swilled,
  Killed every fish that bit to ’em;
Some Galen caught, and, when distilled,
  Found morphine the residuum;
But some that rotted on the earth
  Sprang up again in copies,
And gave two strong narcotics birth,
  Didactic verse and poppies.

Years after, when a poet asked
  The Goddess’s opinion,
As one whose soul its wings had tasked
  In Art’s clear-aired dominion,
‘Discriminate,’ she said, ’betimes;
  The Muse is unforgiving;
Put all your beauty in your rhymes,
  Your morals in your living.’

THE FLYING DUTCHMAN

Don’t believe in the Flying Dutchman? 
  I’ve known the fellow for years;
My button I’ve wrenched from his clutch, man: 
  I shudder whenever he nears!

He’s a Rip van Winkle skipper,
  A Wandering Jew of the sea,
Who sails his bedevilled old clipper
  In the wind’s eye, straight as a bee.

Back topsails! you can’t escape him;
  The man-ropes stretch with his weight,
And the queerest old toggeries drape him,
  The Lord knows how long out of date!

Like a long-disembodied idea,
  (A kind of ghost plentiful now,)
He stands there; you fancy you see a
  Coeval of Teniers or Douw.

He greets you; would have you take letters: 
  You scan the addresses with dread,
While he mutters his donners and wetters,—­
  They’re all from the dead to the dead!

You seem taking time for reflection,
  But the heart fills your throat with a jam,
As you spell in each faded direction
  An ominous ending in dam.

Am I tagging my rhymes to a legend? 
  That were changing green turtle to mock: 
No, thank you!  I’ve found out which wedge-end
  Is meant for the head of a block.

The fellow I have in my mind’s eye
  Plays the old Skipper’s part here on shore,
And sticks like a burr, till he finds I
  Have got just the gauge of his bore.

This postman ’twist one ghost and t’other,
  With last dates that smell of the mould,
I have met him (O man and brother,
  Forgive me!) in azure and gold.

In the pulpit I’ve known of his preaching,
  Out of hearing behind the time,
Some statement of Balaam’s impeaching,
  Giving Eve a due sense of her crime.