“Some day” proving—­no day!  Here’s the puzzle. 
  Passed and passed my turn is.  Why complain? 
He’s so busied!  If I could but muzzle
  People’s foolish mouths that give me pain!

“Letters?” (hear them!) “You a judge of writing? 
  Ask the experts!—­How they shake the head
O’er these characters, your friend’s inditing—­
  Call them forgery from A to Z deg.! deg.20

“Actions?  Where’s your certain proof” (they bother)
  “He, of all you find so great and good,
He, he only, claims this, that, the other
  Action—­claimed by men, a multitude?”

I can simply wish I might refute you,
  Wish my friend would,—­by a word, a wink,—­
Bid me stop that foolish mouth,—­you brute you! 
  He keeps absent,—­why, I cannot think.

Never mind!  Tho’ foolishness may flout me. 
  One thing’s sure enough; ’tis neither frost, 30
No, nor fire, shall freeze or burn from out me
  Thanks for truth—­tho’ falsehood, gained—­tho’ lost.

All my days, I’ll go the softlier, sadlier,
  For that dream’s sake!  How forget the thrill
Thro’ and thro’ me as I thought, “The gladlier
  Lives my friend because I love him still!”

Ah, but there’s a menace some one utters! 
  “What and if your friend at home play tricks? 
Peep at hide-and-seek behind the shutters? 
  Mean your eyes should pierce thro’ solid bricks? 40

’What and if he, frowning, wake you, dreamy? 
  Lay on you the blame that bricks—­conceal? 
Say ’At least I saw who did not see me,
  Does see now, and presently shall feel’?”

“Why, that makes your friend a monster!” say you;
  “Had his house no window?  At first nod,
Would you not have hailed him?” Hush, I pray you! 
  What if this friend happen to be—­God?

* * * * *

INSTANS TYRANNUS

Of the million or two, more or less,
I rule and possess,
One man, for some cause undefined,
Was least to my mind.

I struck him, he grovelled of course—­
For, what was his force? 
I pinned him to earth with my weight
And persistence of hate;
And he lay, would not moan, would not curse,
As his lot might be worse. 10

“Were the object less mean? would he stand
At the swing of my hand! 
For obscurity helps him, and blots
The hole where he squats.” 
So, I set my five wits on the stretch. 
To inveigle the wretch. 
All in vain!  Gold and jewels I threw,
Still he couched there perdue;
I tempted his blood and his flesh,
Hid in roses my mesh, 20
Choicest cates and the flagon’s best spilth: 
Still he kept to his filth.