All politics, religions,
Arts, sciences, appeared to him
But modes of plucking pigeons.

And so he drew his final breath,
And thought he saw with sorrow
Some persons weeping for his death
Who'd be all smiles to-morrow.

A NIGHTMARE.

I dreamed that I was dead. The years went by:
The world forgot that such a man as I
Had ever lived and written: other names
Were hailed with homage, in their turn to die.

Out of my grave a giant beech upgrew.
Its roots transpierced my body, through and through,
My substance fed its growth. From many lands
Men came in troops that giant tree to view.

'T was sacred to my memory and fame--
My monument. But Allen Forman came,
Filled with the fervor of a new untruth,
And carved upon the trunk his odious name!

A WET SEASON.

Horas non numero nisi serenas.

The rain is fierce, it flogs the earth,
And man's in danger.
O that my mother at my birth
Had borne a stranger!
The flooded ground is all around.
The depth uncommon.
How blest I'd be if only she
Had borne a salmon.

If still denied the solar glow
'T were bliss ecstatic
To be amphibious--but O,
To be aquatic!
We're worms, men say, o' the dust, and they
That faith are firm of.
O, then, be just: show me some dust
To be a worm of.

The pines are chanting overhead
A psalm uncheering.
It's O, to have been for ages dead
And hard of hearing!
Restore, ye Pow'rs, the last bright hours
The dial reckoned;
'Twas in the time of Egypt's prime--
Rameses II.

THE CONFEDERATE FLAGS.

Tut-tut! give back the flags--how can you care
You veterans and heroes?
Why should you at a kind intention swear
Like twenty Neroes?

Suppose the act was not so overwise--
Suppose it was illegal--
Is 't well on such a question to arise
And pinch the Eagle?

Nay, let's economize his breath to scold
And terrify the alien
Who tackles him, as Hercules of old
The bird Stymphalian.

Among the rebels when we made a breach
Was it to get their banners?
That was but incidental--'t was to teach
Them better manners.

They know the lesson well enough to-day;
Now, let us try to show them
That we 're not only stronger far than they.
(How we did mow them!)

But more magnanimous. You see, my lads,
'T was an uncommon riot;
Th