A new strait-waistcoat for the human | Creation's plan, out of their own vile mind; Are you not limbed, nerved, jointed, arteried, juiced, As other men? yet, faithless to your kind, Rather like noxious insects you are used mud Pat up a god, and burn, drown, hang, or curse Whoever worships not; each keeps his stud Of texts which wait with saddle on and bridle To puncture life's fair fruit, beneath the To hunt hown atheists to their ugly rind Laying your creed-eggs whence in time there spring Consumers new to eat and buzz and 66 idol. XXIV. This, I perceive, has been your occupation; You should have been more usefully employed; All men are bound to earn their daily Some stronger ones contrived (by eating leather, At last some genius built a bridge of Their weaker friends, and one thing or boats another) The winter months of scarcity to weather; Among these was the late saint's younger brother, Who, in the spring, collecting them together, Persuaded them that Ahmed's holy pother Had wrought in their behalf, and that the place Of Saint should be continued to his FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED POEM. I AM a man of forty, sirs, a native of East Haddam, And have some reason to surmise that I descend from Adam; But what's my pedigree to you? That dry, And, as a natural consequence, presume I need n't say, I wish to write some letters home and have those letters p [I spare the word suggestive of those grim Next Morns that mount Clump, clump, the stairways of the brain with "Sir, my small account," And, after every good we gain-Love, Fame, Wealth, Wisdom-still, As punctual as a cuckoo clock, hold up their little bill, The garçons in our Café of Life, by dreaming us forgot - Sitting, like Homer's heroes, full and musing God knows what, Till they say, bowing, S'il vous plait, voila, Messieurs, la note !] I would not hint at this so soon, but in our callous day, The tollman Debt, who drops his bar across the world's highway, Great Cæsar in mid-march would stop, if Cæsar could not pay; Pilgriming 's dearer than it was: men cannot travel now Scot-free from Dan to Beersheba upon a simple vow; Nay, as long back as Bess's time, when Walsingham went over Ambassador to Cousin France, at Canterbury and Dover Ile was so fleeced by innkeepers that, ere he quitted land, He wrote to the Prime Minister to take the knaves in hand. outlay is about as small-just paper, ink, and pen. Be thankful! Humbugs never die, more than the wandering Jew; Bankrupt, they publish their own deaths, slink for a while from view, Then take an alias, change the sign, and the old trade renew; Indeed, 't is wondrous how each Age, though laughing at the Past, Insists on having its tight shoe made on the same old last; How it is sure its system would break up at once without The bunion which it will believe heredi tary gout; How it takes all its swans for geese, nay, stranger yet and sadder, |