Ye Gods assist! aid me ye heav’nly nine!
Let all your pow’rs cooperate with mine,
Justly to celebrate the theme divine
Of woman hatching into masculine.
From high empyrean descend, ye Graces,
If there ye dwell, (if not where’er the place is,—)
Unlock, ye Sciences, ye Arts, prepare
Donations rich from water earth and air!
Unite, O Poesy, in one bright chain
All metaphors both sacred and profane!
Fuse, all ye elements, for this my story
In one great holocaust to female glory.
So may the bard in worthy style proclaim
The Amazonian honor, name, and fame;
And so to all posterity transmit
Those deeds redoubtable in measures fit,—
That wond’rous story, born on earthly sod,
Disperse through all the universe of God.
I sing the birth of th’ Amazonian age
Whose rampant outcoming may well engage
The philosophic thought of wrinkled sage,
The poets flippant measure, and the page
Where history records, with equal care,
The most important and the least affair.
No feeble, helpless waif was born that day,—
Feeling to life, its weak uncertain way,
With gentle breath, a thought of heav’n that lingers,
Kissing its velvet lips and waxen fingers.
But, sooth to say, a fierce volcanic child
Tore into being, amid orgies wild.
Begot of unrest, conceived of unreason,
Carried in envy and born out of season,
It burst on the world a monster, a fright,
A meteor baleful, a mildew and blight,
A terror, like the fabled torch of yore
A mother dreaming, in speechless anguish bore;
A Ghoul, half human, shapeless monster half,
Not quite a kangaroo, not quite giraffe,
With countless social improprieties,
Weak indiscretions, contrarieties—
A bundle of irregularities
With woman’s skin to wrap its rarities.
A child of many hopes which proved to be
A harpy foul of evil augury.
Its upper half boxer—like brawny and strong,
The members termed nether were scrawny and long;
And ended in fixtures quite fit for its trade—
Huge talons, like buzzard’s, for tearing things, made.
It’s nose might have stood for a Monitor’s pride,—
A cutwater shapely to buffet the tide,
With “noli me tangere” carved deep and wide
In wrinkles upturning with scorn either side.
The tongue was a marvel of skill and design;
’Twas snake like and forked, but the forkings were nine,
A complicate unit, a digitate thing.
Each digit played loose, and was armed with a sting
Which was death—the whole waved like banner unfurled
From its foam-covered mouth, defiantly curled—
A gulf that was yawning to swallow a world.
Carnivora genus ’twas easy to see,
Whose serrated tushes, tho’ frightful may be,
Could rip reputation, in style mighty free.
Its caudal appendage, reluctant to show,
Sharp-pointed, like workers’ in brimstone below,
Curves fiercely behind it, and, lashing the air
Shall sting itself writhing in final despair.
Me Hercle! what simile, metaphor true,
The vision can render that breaks on the view,
When upward we wander and meditate where
The glory of woman is crowned by her hair?
The muse is uncertain, but rather prefers
The quills of the hedgehog with some kind of burrs,
Whose clinging tenacity savors of what
When speaking of woman is never forgot;—
Which scatter a shower of deadliest darts
From arsenal copious of stingings and smarts,
O’er optics that twinkle with serpent-like arts.
So, coming at random, unblest by the bans,
’Twas fondled by Katies, and coddled by Fans,
And doctored according to recentest plans;
To embraces bony was savagely folded,
On bosoms of granite was badgered and scolded.
The grannies in order to properly breed it,
At outset like christians endeavored to feed it,
But vainly; for, scorning all patent-right fixtures,
Soft pap it rejected, and baby-milk mixtures.
Away with your catnip, ye wrinkled viragos!
Your soothing concoctions, your sops and your sagos—
Give syrups of pepper, not weakly diluted,
And waters of Marah—they’re charmingly suited
Impulses to quicken, not easy computed.
For solids use thistles, and thorns, and rough brambles—
The fodder that asses collect in their rambles.
A cabbage to give it agreeable savor,
Is found in the meadows, of suitable flavor.
Thus forage and fluids, with caution selected,
’Tis like, in the temper, will ripen reflected.
One species of felines in manner befitting
Will show in the impulse for scratching and spitting.
Another polemic Grimalkin, I’ll venture,
Peculiar sensation will wake by its stench, or
There’s nothing in breeding, and feeding, and teaching,
As doctors in physics and ethics are preaching.
Such regimen followed, with strictest attention,
Will breed you more squabbles than scribblers can mention.
BOOK I.
THE SANHEDRIM.
GATHERING OF THE CLANS. MOLLUSKS, SAURIANS, PACHYDERMS.
Wherein is found a full and true relation
Of tribal gathering in convocation,
Designed and called by sundry faded beauties,
For reconstructing man’s revolted duties,
Of such discordant elements compounded,
It ended in “confusion worse confounded”—
A gossip’s ripping bee with rags to mend it,—
A sick’ning witches stew with hags to tend it,—
A love-feast gross—a sacrament absurd
Of painted demirep and gallows bird—
A woman’s carnival, a crazy fair—
A vast impromptu home-made dinner where
All projects wild and visionary schemings,
Licentious crudities and zealots dreamings
Unwashed were tumbled in—each other spoiling—
One single, mighty cauldron, hot and boiling
Till smell of everything but sulphur rose,
And made creation gladly hold its nose.
As erst, on tall Olympus thundering Jove
Convened th’ assembly of the Gods above,
In solemn council, ripe for high debate
On mighty themes and grand affairs of state;
So now, when envious hate had placed her throne,—
When baseless jealousy was broadcast sown—
When discontent had poisoned all the land—
Ambition frenzied issued her command
And congregated, drawn from lands afar,
Women intent to wage the wordy war.
By common impulse summoned to the field,
(Fledglings, eager their sprouting arms to wield
In strife, for vain renown and empty fame,
At honor’s cost and woman’s holy name,)
They met to revolutionize the nation;
To topple down all bars ’twixt sex and station—
With reckless zeal and sacrilegious hand
To upheave the social systems of the land;
Forsooth, to cast their fancied Bastile down,
And win unbounded license for their crown.
Panting, in furious concourse gathered then
This rabble rout, in uproar shaming men.
Now might be seen, with faces brazen there,
Beauty in ev’ry style from brown to fair
Widows, with smiles and wiles in rare perfection,
Seeking a mart for second hand affection.
Old maids, whose charms tho’ wholly unprotected
Blind man to seize had cruelly neglected.
Unfortunate beings whom nature unkind
Had stinted in powers of body or mind.
Whom love had deluded or envy had sour’d,
In gloomy recesses now huddled and cowered,
Chewed cardamon fiercely and balefully glower’d;
For want of affinities sadly complaining,
Or bitterly mourning virginity waning.
But baffled and hampered by fate in their plan,
They sought their misfortune to visit on man.
The usual style—men glut themselves with evil
Till sickened, cloyed; then charge it to the devil,
And by perverted ethical provision
Transform the harlot to the prince precision,
Whose zealous dupes with saintly honors load her
Dying in unction of a holy odor.
Some few there were who, still for husbands angling
Affect the opposite of rant and wrangling,
Soft, sentimental bread-and-butter misses,
Purring like kittens, and open to kisses.
Bewildered by philanthrophy perverted,
Of them naught good or bad could be asserted.
Their souls, pervaded by some sleepy vapor,
Emit a sickly light like penny taper.
They curts’y, loll, and bend with sighs and fawning,
With simp’ring smile their faces faintly dawning,
And would, indeed they would (unheard of kindness!)
Rejoice if man were healed of mental blindness.
It pains their gentle souls ethereal,
To view such waste of good material.
If men would only see just how the case is
And humbly sink to their intended places,—
Ah me! such stout convenient nasty creatures!
Such splendid foils to woman’s lovely features!
They’d be so useful in the she-millenium
As butments for the grand proscenium!
Doubtless such putty products sleek and glossy
Some purpose serve, in esse or, in posse,
Tho’ heaven knows one scarcely can believe it;
Perhaps, as floating log, when sailors heave it,
Declares their speed by rate at which they leave it,
And so assists the nautical profession,
These bubbles show society’s progression
And earth the better is for their possession.
Among the other wonders of creation
Who sped in haste “from earth’s remotest nation”
To magnify this great conglomeration,
And darted icy jets from jetty eyes
On all who dared oppose this high emprise,
There came a certain pair, free lovers higho,
Whose souls bemoaned their sex’s helpless plight,
And sauntered, arm in arm, that crowd among,
They usually were loud enough of tongue;
But, having bolted dinner in advance,
Confessed themselves, “two fools for utterance.”
Twin sisters, they were called in gay pretense—
Sin twisters rightly, in a moral sense.
Bold-eyed, they strode uneasy to and fro,
Like tigers caged to complement the show
Intensely lib’ral in their private action
They scoff at mere conventional compaction;
And, even edicts from the eternal throne,
As far as promulgation makes them known,
If framed to fetter spinster, wife, or “widder”
But empty ceremonial consider.
They hold themselves at liberty to cater
To healthy promptings of their carnal “natur;”
For this, they tell us, is a right attendant
On our condition free and independent.
Since God to rule our bodies has commanded,
We’re bound to do it fair and even-handed,
To ev’ry function deal impartial measure
Of duty, worship, labor, and of pleasure.
So, skillfully, they argue; whether truly,
I own I’m unprepared to answer duly:
For I’m not learn’d in law Levitical
Nor skilled in “schemas” Jesuitical.
We’ll therefore give a simple explanation,
A truthful mathematic demonstration,
Of fancy, fact, or whimsical delusion
Toss’d on the surface of this wild confusion;
Hoping the next or other generation
Will yield a bard of heavn’ly ordination
Who, skill’d in ethical analysis
May classify this rare catalysis:
Who gifted with discriminative art
Shall better know the tasteful pruner’s part.
Him all the world with rapt’rous recognition
Shall usher to his hardly-earned position,
And cry “What have we here?” a poet new,
Whom nature self hath sealed a poet true!
With presence prompt to grace the grand occasion
In force were seen the priests of that persuasion,
Which runs the mail across the mystic border,
And manufactures miracles to order.
Nor think it strange such birds should flock together;
For being clearly of a common feather,
They find, tho’ not in visible connection,
Their points objective in the same direction.
“Id est,” while differing in the main design
They operate a “non-competing line.”
These winnow wisdom from a world of chaff
The others suck it through a telegraph.