I take dislike to a dog my favorite long,
And sell him; he goes mad next week and snaps.
guess that stranger will turn up to-day
I have not seen these three years; there's his knock.
I wager "sixty peaches on that tree!” –
That I pick up a dollar in my walk,
That your wife's brother's cousin's name was George -
And win on all points. O, you wince at this?
You'd fain distinguish between gift and gift,
Washington's oracle and Sludge's itch
O'the elbow when at whist he ought to trump?
With Sludge it's too absurd? Fine, draw the line
Somewhere, but, sir, your somewhere is not mine!
Bless us, I'm turning poet! It's time to end!
How you have drawn me out, sir! All I ask
Is am I heir or not heir? If I'm he,
Then, sir, remember, that same personage
(To judge by what we read in the newspaper)
Requires, beside one nobleman in gold
To carry up and down his coronet,
Another servant, probably a duke,
To hold egg-nogg in readiness: why want
Attendance, sir, when helps in his father's house
Abound, I'd like to know?
My fault is that I tell too plain a truth.
Why, which of those who say they disbelieve,
Your clever people, but has dreamed his dream,
Caught his coincidence, stumbled on his fact
He can't explain (he'll tell you smilingly)
Which he's too much of a philosopher
To count as supernatural, indeed,
So calls a puzzle and problem - proud of it:
Bidding you still be on your guard, you know,
Because one fact don't make a system stand,
Nor prove this an occasional escape
Of spirit beneath the matter: that's the way!
Just so wild Indians picked up, piece by piece,
The fact in California, the fine gold
That underlay the gravel, hoarded these,
But never made a system stand, nor dug!
So wise men hold out in each hollowed palm
A handful of experience, sparkling fact
They can't explain; and since their rest of life
Is all explainable, what proof in this?
Whereas I take the fact, the grain of gold,
And fling away the dirty rest of life,
And add this grain to the grain each fool has found
Of the million other such philosophers,
Till I see gold, all gold and only gold,
Truth questionless though unexplainable,
And the miraculous proved the commonplace!
The other fools believed in mud, no doubt
Failed to know gold they saw was that so strange?
Are all men born to play Bach's fiddle-fugues,
"Time" with the foil in carte, jump their own height,
Cut the mutton with the broadsword, skate a five,
Make the red hazard with the cue, clip nails
While swimming, in five minutes row a mile,
Pull themselves three feet up, with the left arm,
Do sums of fifty figures in their head,
And so on, by the scores of instances?
The Sludge with luck, who sees the precious facts,
His fellows strive and fail to see, may rank
With these, and share the advantage!
The drawback! Think it over by yourself;
I have not heart, sir, and the fire's gone gray.
Defect somewhere compensates for success,
Every one knows that! O, we're equals, sir!
The big-legged fellow has a little arm
And a less brain, though big legs win the race:
Do you suppose I'scape the common lot?
Say, I was born with flesh so sensitive,
Soul so alert, that, practice helping both,
I guess what's going on outside the veil,
Just as a prisoned crane feels pairing-time
In the islands where his kind are, so must fall
To capering by himself some shiny night,
As if your back-yard were a plot of spice-
Thus am I'ware of the spirit-world: while you,
Blind as a beetle that way, for amends,
Why, you can double fist and floor me, sir!
Ride that hot, hardmouthed, horrid horse of yours,
Laugh while it lightens, play with the great dog,
Speak your mind, though it vex some friend to hear,
Never brag, never bluster, never blush, -
In short, you've pluck, when I'm a coward
I know it, I can't help it, — folly or no,
I'm paralyzed, my hand 's no more a hand,
Nor my head, a head, in danger: you can smile
And change the pipe in your cheek. Your gift's not
Would
you swap for mine? No! but you
To yours: I dare say! I, too, sigh at times,
Wish I were stouter, could tell truth nor flinch,
Kept cool when threatened, did not mind so much
Being dressed gayly, making strangers stare,
Eating nice things; when I amuse myself,
I shut my eyes, and fancy in my brain
I'm now the President, now, Jenny Lind,
Now, Emerson, now, the Benicia Boy -
With all the civilized world a-wondering
And worshipping!
I know it's folly and worse:
I feel such tricks sap, honeycomb the soul,
But I can't cure myself, despond, despair,
And then, hey, presto, there's a turn of the wheel,
Under comes uppermost, fate makes full amends
Sludge knows and sees and hears a hundred things
You all are blind to, - I've my taste of truth,
Likewise my touch of falsehood, vice no doubt,
But you've your vices also: I'm content.
What, sir? You won't shake hands? "Because I cheat! That's enough
You've found me out in cheating!"
To make an apostle swear! Why, when I cheat,
Mean to cheat, do cheat, and am caught in the act,
Are you, or rather, am I sure of the fact?
(There's verse again, but I'm inspired somehow.)
Well then, I'm not sure! I may be, perhaps,
Free as a babe from cheating: how it began,
My gift, no matter; what 't is got to be
In the end now, that 's the question: answer that!
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