At the Sign of the Cock

II

Mark where her Equatorial Pioneer

Delirant on the tramp goes littoralwise.

415

His Flag at furl, portmanteaued; drains to the dregs
The penultimate brandy-bottle, coal-on-the-head-piece gift
Of who avenged the Old Sea-Rover's smirch.

Marchant he treads the all-along of inarable drift
On dubiously connivent legs,

The facile prey of predatory flies;

Panting for further; sworn to lurch

Empirical on to the Menelik-buffered, enhavened blue,
Rhyming-see Cantique I.-with doodle-doo.

III

Infuriate she kicked against Imperial fact;

Vulnant she felt

What pin-stab should have stained Another's pelt
Puncture her own Colonial lung-balloon,

Volant to nigh meridian. Whence rebuffed,

The perjured Scythian she lacked

At need's pinch, sick with spleen of the rudely cuffed

Below her breath she cursed; she cursed the hour

When on her spring for him the young Tyrannical broke Amid the unhallowed wedlock's vodka-shower,

She passionate, he dispassionate; tricked

Her wits to eye-blind; borrowed the ready as for dower;
Till from the trance of that Hymettus-moon
She woke,

A nuptial-knotted derelict;

Pensioned with Rescripts other aid declined

By the plumped leech saturate urging Peace
In guise of heavy-armed Gospeller to men,

Tyrannical unto fraternal equal liberal, her. Not she;
Not till Alsace her consanguineous find
What red deteutonising artillery

Shall shatter her beer-reek alien police

The just-now pluripollent; not till then.

IV

More pungent yet the esoteric pain
Squeezing her pliable vitals nourishes feud
Insanely grumous, grumously insane.
For lo!

Past common balmly on the Bordereau,
Churns she the skim o' the gutter's crust
With Anti-Judaic various carmagnole,
Whooped praise of the Anti-just;
Her boulevard brood

Gyratory in convolvements militant-mad;
Theatrical of faith in the Belliform,
Her Og,

Her Monstrous. Fled what force she had
To buckle the jaw-gape, wide agog

For the Preconcerted One,

The Anticipated, ripe to clinch the whole;

Queen-bee to hive the hither and thither volant swarm.

Bides she his coming; adumbrates the new

Expurgatorial Divine,

Her final effulgent Avatar,

Postured outside a trampling mastodon

Black as her Baker's charger; towering; visibly gorged

With blood of traitors. Knee-grip stiff,

Spine straightened, on he rides;

Embossed the Patriot's brow with hieroglyph

Of martial dossiers, nothing forged

About him save his armour. So she bides

Voicing his advent indeterminably far,

Rooster her sign,

Rooster her conspuent doodle-doo.

Behold her, pranked with spurs for bloody sport,
How she acclaims,

A crapulous chanticleer,

Breach of the hectic dawn of yon New Year.

Not yet her fill of rumours sucked;

Presto Furioso

Inebriate of honour; blushfully wroth;
Tireless to play her old primeval games;
Her plumage preened the yet unplucked
Liks sails of a galleon, rudder hard amort
With crepitant mast

Fronting the hazard to dare of a dual blast
The intern and the extern, blizzards both.

417

Owen Seaman.

SPONTANEOUS Us!

PRESTO FURIOSO

AFTER WALT WHITMAN

O my Camarados! I have no delicatesse as a diplomat, but I go blind on Libertad!

Give me the flap-flap of the soaring Eagle's pinions!

Give me the tail of the British lion tied in a knot inextricable, not to be solved anyhow!

Give me a standing army (I say "give me," because just at present we want one badly, armies being often useful in time of war).

I see our superb fleet (I take it that we are to have a superb fleet built almost immediately);

I observe the crews prospectively; they are constituted of various nationalities, not necessarily American;

I see them sling the slug and chew the plug;

I hear the drum begin to hum;

Both the above rhymes are purely accidental, and contrary

to my principles.

We shall wipe the floor of the mill-pond with the scalps of able-bodied British tars!

I see Professor Edison about to arrange for us a torpedohose on wheels, likewise an infernal electro-semaphore; I see Henry Irving dead sick and declining to play Corporal

Brewster;

Cornell, I yell! I yell Cornell!

I note the Manhattan boss leaving his dry-goods store and investing in a small Gatling-gun and a ten-cent banner;

I further note the Identity evolved out of forty-four spacious and thoughtful States;

I note Canada as shortly to be merged in that Identity; similarly Van Diemen's Land, Gibraltar, and Stratford-on-Avon;

Briefly, I see creation whipped!

O ye Colonels! I am with you (I too am a Colonel and on the pension-list);

I drink to the lot of you; to Colonels Cleveland, Hitt, Vanderbilt, Chauncey M. Depew, O'Donovan Rossa, and the late Colonel Monroe;

I drink an egg-flip, a morning-caress, an eye-opener, a maiden-bosom, a vermuth-cocktail, three sherry-cobblers, and a gin-sling!

Good old Eagle!

Owen Seaman.

TO JULIA IN SHOOTING TOGS

AND A HERRICKOSE VEIN

WHENAS to shoot my Julia goes,

Then, then (methinks), how bravely shows
That rare arrangement of her clothes!

So shod as when the Huntress Maid

With thumping buskin bruised the glade,

She moveth, making earth afraid.

Against the sting of random chaff
Her leathern gaiters circle half
The arduous crescent of her calf.

Unto th' occasion timely fit,

My love's attire doth show her wit,
And of her legs a little bit.

Farewell

Sorely it sticketh in my throat,
She having nowhere to bestow't,
To name the absent petticoat.

In lieu whereof a wanton pair
Of knickerbockers she doth wear,
Full windy and with space to spare.

Enlarged by the bellying breeze,
Lord! how they playfully do ease
The urgent knocking of her knees!

Lengthways curtailèd to her taste
A tunic circumvents her waist,
And soothly it is passing chaste.

Upon her head she hath a gear
Even such as wights of ruddy cheer
Do use in stalking of the deer.

Haply her truant tresses mock
Some coronal of shapelier block,
To wit, the bounding billy-cock.

Withal she hath a loaded gun,
Whereat the pheasants, as they run,
Do make a fair diversiòn.

For very awe, if so she shoots,

My hair upriseth from the roots,

And lo! I tremble in my boots!

419

Owen Seaman.

FAREWELL

PROVOKED BY CALVERLEY'S "FOREVER"

"FAREWELL!" Another gloomy word
As ever into language crept.
'Tis often written, never heard,
Except