BEFORE THE CURTAIN
Behind the footlights hangs the rusty baize, A trifle shabby in the upturned blaze Of flaring gas and curious eyes that gaze.
The stage, methinks, perhaps is none too wide, And hardly fit for royal Richard's stride, Or Falstaff's bulk, or Denmark's youthful pride.
Ah, well! no passion walks its humble boards;
O'er it no king nor valiant Hector lords:
The simplest skill is all its space affords.
The song and jest, the dance and trifling play, The local hit at follies of the day, The trick to pass an idle hour away,--For these no trumpets that announce the Moor, No blast that makes the hero's welcome sure,--A single fiddle in the overture!
TO THE PLIOCENE SKULL*
(A GEOLOGICAL ADDRESS)
"Speak, O man, less recent! Fragmentary fossil!
Primal pioneer of pliocene formation, Hid in lowest drifts below the earliest stratum Of volcanic tufa!
"Older than the beasts, the oldest Palaeotherium;
Older than the trees, the oldest Cryptogami;
Older than the hills, those infantile eruptions Of earth's epidermis!
"Eo--Mio--Plio--whatsoe'er the 'cene' was That those vacant sockets filled with awe and wonder,--Whether shores Devonian or Silurian beaches,--Tell us thy strange story!
"Or has the professor slightly antedated By some thousand years thy advent on this planet, Giving thee an air that's somewhat better fitted For cold-blooded creatures?
"Wert thou true spectator of that mighty forest When above thy head the stately Sigillaria Reared its columned trunks in that remote and distant Carboniferous epoch?
"Tell us of that scene,--the dim and watery woodland, Songless, silent, hushed, with never bird or insect, Veiled with spreading fronds and screened with tall club mosses, Lycopodiacea,--"When beside thee walked the solemn Plesiosaurus, And around thee crept the festive Ichthyosaurus, While from time to time above thee flew and circled Cheerful Pterodactyls.
"Tell us of thy food,--those half-marine refections, Crinoids on the shell and Brachipods au naturel,--Cuttlefish to which the pieuvre of Victor Hugo Seems a periwinkle.
"Speak, thou awful vestige of the earth's creation, Solitary fragment of remains organic!
Tell the wondrous secret of thy past existence,--Speak! thou oldest primate!"
Even as I gazed, a thrill of the maxilla, And a lateral movement of the condyloid process, With post-pliocene sounds of healthy mastication, Ground the teeth together.
And from that imperfect dental exhibition, Stained with express juices of the weed nicotian, Came these hollow accents, blent with softer murmurs Of expectoration:
"Which my name is Bowers, and my crust was busted Falling down a shaft in Calaveras County;
But I'd take it kindly if you'd send the pieces Home to old Missouri!"
* See notes at end.
THE BALLAD OF MR. COOKE
LEGEND OF THE CLIFF HOUSE, SAN FRANCISCO)
Where the sturdy ocean breeze Drives the spray of roaring seas, That the Cliff House balconies Overlook:
There, in spite of rain that balked, With his sandals duly chalked, Once upon a tight-rope walked Mr. Cooke.
But the jester's lightsome mien, And his spangles and his sheen, All had vanished when the scene He forsook.
Yet in some delusive hope, In some vague desire to cope, ONE still came to view the rope Walked by Cooke.
Amid Beauty's bright array, On that strange eventful day, Partly hidden from the spray, In a nook, Stood Florinda Vere de Vere;
Who, with wind-disheveled hair, And a rapt, distracted air, Gazed on Cooke.
Then she turned, and quickly cried To her lover at her side, While her form with love and pride Wildly shook:
"Clifford Snook! oh, hear me now!
Here I break each plighted vow;
There's but one to whom I bow, And that's Cooke!"
Haughtily that young man spoke:
"I descend from noble folk;
'Seven Oaks,' and then 'Se'nnoak,'
Lastly 'Snook,'
Is the way my name I trace.
Shall a youth of noble race In affairs of love give place To a Cooke?"
"Clifford Snook, I know thy claim To that lineage and name, And I think I've read the same In Horne Tooke;
But I swear, by all divine, Never, never, to be thine, Till thou canst upon yon line Walk like Cooke."
Though to that gymnastic feat He no closer might compete Than to strike a BALANCE-sheet In a book;
Yet thenceforward from that day He his figure would display In some wild athletic way, After Cooke.
On some household eminence, On a clothes-line or a fence, Over ditches, drains, and thence O'er a brook, He, by high ambition led, Ever walked and balanced, Till the people, wondering, said, "How like Cooke!"
Step by step did he proceed, Nerved by valor, not by greed, And at last the crowning deed Undertook.
Misty was the midnight air, And the cliff was bleak and bare, When he came to do and dare, Just like Cooke.
Through the darkness, o'er the flow, Stretched the line where he should go, Straight across as flies the crow Or the rook.
One wild glance around he cast;
Then he faced the ocean blast, And he strode the cable last Touched by Cooke.
Vainly roared the angry seas, Vainly blew the ocean breeze;
But, alas! the walker's knees Had a crook;
And before he reached the rock Did they both together knock, And he stumbled with a shock--Unlike Cooke!
Downward dropping in the dark, Like an arrow to its mark, Or a fish-pole when a shark Bites the hook, Dropped the pole he could not save, Dropped the walker, and the wave Swift engulfed the rival brave Of J. Cooke!
Came a roar across the sea Of sea-lions in their glee, In a tongue remarkably Like Chinook;
And the maddened sea-gull seemed Still to utter, as he screamed, "Perish thus the wretch who deemed Himself Cooke!"
But on misty moonlit nights Comes a skeleton in tights, Walks once more the giddy heights He mistook;
And unseen to mortal eyes, Purged of grosser earthly ties, Now at last in spirit guise Outdoes Cooke.
Still the sturdy ocean breeze Sweeps the spray of roaring seas, Where the Cliff House balconies Overlook;
And the maidens in their prime, Reading of this mournful rhyme, Weep where, in the olden time, Walked J. Cooke.
THE BALLAD OF THE EMEU
