The Humorist

“What is that, mother?”

“The humorist, child.
His hands are black, but his heart is mild.”

“May I touch him, mother?”

“Twere needlessly done.
He is slightly touched already, my son.”

“Oh, why does he wear such a ghastly grin?”

“’Tis the outward sign of a joke within.”

“Will he crack it, mother?”

“Not so, my saint.
’Tis meant for the Saturday Livercomplaint."

“Does he suffer, mother?”

“God help him, yes!-
A thousand and fifty kinds of distress.”

“What makes him sweat so?”

“The demons that lurk
In the fear of having to go to work.”

“Why doesn’t he end, then, his life with a rope?”

“Abolition of Hell has deprived him of hope.”


Religion

Hassan Bedreddin, clad in rags, ill-shod
Sought the great temple of the living God.
The worshipers arose and drove him forth,
And one in power beat him with a rod

Allah," he cried, thou seest what I got:
Thy servants bar me from the sacred spot.”
“Be comforted,” the Holy One replied:
It is the only place where I am not."


To-day

I saw a man who knelt in prayer,
and heard him say:
I’ll lay my inmost spirit bare
To-day.”

“Lord, for to-morrow and its need
I do not pray;
Let me on my neighbor feed
To-day.”

“Let me my duty duly shirk
And run away
From any form or phase of work
To-day.”

“From Thy commands exempted still,
Let me obey
The promptings of my private will
To-day.”

“Let me no word profane, no lie,
Unthinking, say
If any one is standing by
To-day.”

“My secret sins and vices grave
Let none betray;
The scoffer’s jeers I do not crave
To-day.”

“And if to-day my fortune all
Should ebb away
Help me on other men's to fall
To-day.”

“So, for to-morrow and its mite
I do not pray;
Just give me everything in sight
To-day.”

I cried: “Amen!” He rose and ran
Like oil away.
I said: “I’ve seen an honest man
To-day.”


Philosopher Bimm

Republicans think Jonas Bimm
A Democrat gone mad,
And Democrats consider him
Republican and bad.

The Lout reviles him as a Dude
And gives it him right hot;
The Dude condemns his crassitude
And calls him sans-culottes.

Derided as an Anglophile
By Anglophobes, forsooth,
As Anglophobe he feels, the while,
The Anglophilic tooth.

The Churchman calls him Atheist;
The Atheists, rough-shod,
Have ridden o’er him long and hissed:
“The wretch believes in God!”

The Saints whom clergymen we call
Would kill him if they could;
The Sinners (scientists and all)
Complain that he is good.

All men deplore the difference
Between themselves and him,
And all devise expedients
For paining Jonas Bimm.

I, too, with wild demoniac glee,
Would put out both his eyes;
For Mr. Bimm appears to me
Insufferably wise!


Hell

The friends who stood about my bed
Looked down upon my face and said:
“God’s will be done- the fellow’s dead.”

When from my body I was free
I straightway felt myself, ah me!
Sink downward to the life to be.

Full twenty centuries I fell,
And then alighted. Here you dwell
For aye, a Voice cried-this is Hell!

A landscape lay about my feet,
Where trees were green and flowers sweet.
The climate was devoid of heat.

The sun looked down with gentle beam,
Upon the bosom of the stream,
Nor saw I any sign of steam.

The waters by the sky were tinged,
The hills light and color fringed,
Birds warbled on the wing unsinged.

“Ah, no this is not Hell,” I cried;
“The preachers ne’er so greatly lied,
This is Earth’s spirit glorified!”

“Good souls do not in Hades Dwell.
And, look, there’s Roz Dutton!” Well,
The Voice said, that’s what makes it Hell.


Election Day

Despots effete upon tottering thrones
Unsteadily poised upon dead men’s bones,
Walk up! Walk up! the circus is free,
And this wonderful spectacle you shall see:
Millions of voters who mostly are fools,
Demagogues’, dupes and candidates tools-
Armies of uniformed mountebanks,
And braying disciples of brainless cranks.
Many a week they’ve bellowed like beeves,
Bitterly blackguarding, lying like thieves,
Libeling freely the quick and the dead
And painting the New Jerusalem red.
Tyrants monarchical- emperors, kings,
Princes and nobles and all such things-
Noblemen, gentlemen, step this way:
There’s nothing, the Devil excepted, to pay,
And the freaks and curios here to be seen
Are very uncommonly grand and serene.

No more with vivacity the debate,
Nor cheerfully crack the dissenting pate;
No longer, the dull understanding to aid,
The stomach accepts the instructive blade,
Nor the stubborn heart learns what is what
From revelation of rabbit-shot;
And vilification’s flames- behold!
Burn with a bickering faint and cold.

Magnificent spectacle!- every tongue
Suddenly civil that yesterday rung
(Like the clapper beating a brazen bell)
Each fair reputation’s eternal knell;
Hands no longer delivering blows,
And noses, for counting, arrayed in rows.

Walk up, gentlemen- nothing to pay-
The Devil goes back to Hell to-day.


A Paradox

“If life were not worth living,” said the preacher,
“ ’Twould have in suicide one pleasant feature.”
“An error,” said the pessimist, “you’re making:
What’s not worth having cannot be worth taking.”

---Ambrose Bierce