mark twain.
Yet stay! why bid the dead arise?
Why call them back from Charon’s wherry?
Come, Yankee Mark, with twinkling eyes,
Confuse these ghouls with something merry!
Come, Kipling, with thy soldiers three,
Thy barrack-ladies frail and fervent,
Forsake thy themes of butchery
And be the merry Muses’ servant!
Come, Dickens’ foster-son, Bret Harte!
Come, Sims, though gigmen flout thy labours!
Tom Hardy, blow the clouds apart
With sound of rustic fifes and tabors!
Dick Blackmore, full of homely joy,
Come from thy garden by the river,
And pelt with fruit and flowers, old boy,
These dismal bores who drone for ever!
george meredith.
Come, too, George Meredith, whose eyes,
Though oft with vapours shadow’d over,
Can catch the sunlight from the skies
And flash it down on lass and lover;
Tell us of Life, and Love’s young dream,
Show the prismatic soul of Woman,
Bring back the Light, whose morning beam
First made the Beast upright and human!
You can be merry, George, I vow!
Wit through your cloudiest prosing twinkles!
Brood as you may, upon your brow
The cynic, Art, has left no wrinkles!
For you’re a poet to the core,
No ghouls can from the Muses win you;
So throw your cap i’ the air once more,
And show the joy of earth that’s in you!