poor get all the thunder.

Ring, ring! merry bells, ring!
O fortunate few,
With letters blue,
Good for a seat and a nearer view!
Fortunate few, whom I dare not name;
Dilettanti! Creme de la Creme!
We commoners stood by the street facade,
And caught a glimpse of the cavalcade.
We saw the bride
In diamond pride,
With jeweled maidens to guard her side--
Six lustrous maidens in tarletan.
She led the van of the caravan;
Close behind her, her mother
(Dressed in gorgeous _moire antique_,
That told as plainly as words could speak,
She was more antique than the other)
Leaned on the arm of Don Rataplan,
Santa Claus de la Muscovado,
Senor Grandissimo Bastinado.
Happy mortal! fortunate man!
And Marquis of El Dorado!

In they swept, all riches and grace,
Silks and satins, jewels and lace;
In they swept from the dazzled sun,
And soon in the church the deed was done.
Three prelates stood on the chancel high:
A knot that gold and silver can buy,
Gold and silver may yet untie,
Unless it is tightly fastened;
What's worth doing at all's worth doing well,
And the sale of a young Manhattan belle
Is not to be pushed or hastened;
So two Very-Reverends graced the scene,
And the tall Archbishop stood between,
By prayer and fasting chastened;
The Pope himself would have come from Rome,
But Garibaldi kept him at home.
Haply those robed prelates thought
Their words were the power that tied the knot;
But another power that love-knot tied,
And I saw the chain round the neck of the bride--
A glistening, priceless, marvelous chain,
Coiled with diamonds again and again,
As befits a diamond wedding;
Yet still 'twas a chain, and I thought she knew it,
And half-way longed for the will to undo it,
By the secret tears she was shedding.

But isn't it odd to think, whenever
We all go through that terrible River--
Whose sluggish tide alone can sever
(The Archbishop says) the Church decree,
By floating one into Eternity
And leaving the other alive as ever--
As each wades through that ghastly stream,
The satins that rustle and gems that gleam,
Will grow pale and heavy, and sink away
To the noisome River's bottom-clay!
Then the costly bride and her maidens six,
Will shi