I cannot sing today, my dear, about your locks of gold, for my fat head is feeling queer since I have caught a cold; and when a bard is feeling off, and full of pills and care, and has to sit around and cough, he sours on golden hair. I cannot sing today, dear heart, about your coral lips; the doctor's coming in his cart; he's making daily trips; he makes me sit in scalding steam, with blankets loaded down, and people say they hear me scream half way across the town; he makes me swallow slippery elm and ink and moldy paste, and blithely hunts throughout the realm for things with bitter taste. I cannot sing today, my love, about your swanlike neck, for I am sitting by the stove, a grim and ghastly wreck. And many poultices anoint the summit of my head; I've coughed my ribs all out of joint, and I am largely dead; and so the mention of a harp just makes my blood run cold; some other blooming poet sharp must sing your locks of gold! Some other troubadour, my sweet, must sing to you instead, for I have earache in my feet and chilblains in my head!
The Beggar
He had a little organ there, the which I watched him grind; and oft he cried, as in despair: "Please help me—I am blind!" I muttered, as his music rose: "He plays in frightful luck!" And then I went down in my clothes, and gave him half a buck. A friend came rushing up just then, and said: "You make me ache! You are the easiest of men—that beggar is a fake! The fraud has money salted down—more than you'll ever earn; he owns a business block in town, and he has farms to burn." I answered: "Though the beggar own a bankroll large and fat, I don't regret the half a bone I threw into his hat. I see a man who looks as though the world had used him bad; it sets my jaded heart aglow to give him half a scad. And though that beggar man may be the worst old fraud about, that makes no sort of odds to me; that isn't my lookout. I'll stake Tom, Harry, Dick or Jack, whene'er he comes my way; my conscience pats me on the back, and says that I'm O. K. But if a busted pilgrim came to work me, in distress, and I inquired his age and name, his pastor's street address, and asked to see the documents to prove he told no lies, before I loosened up ten cents, my conscience would arise and prod me till I couldn't sleep, or eat a grown man's meal; and so the beggar man may keep that section of a wheel."
Looking Forward
I like to think that when I'm dead, my restless soul unchained, the things that worry my fat head will then all be explained. This fact a lot of sorrow brings, throughout this weary land; there are so many, many things, we do not understand! Oh, why is Virtue oft oppressed, and scourged and beaten down, while Vice, with gems of East and West, is flaunting through the town? And why is childhood's face with tears of sorrow often stained? When I have reached the shining spheres, these things will be explained. Why does the poor man go to jail, because he steals a trout, while wealthy men who steal a whale quite easily stay out? Why does affliction dog the man who earns two bones a day, who, though he try the best he can, can't drive the wolf away? Why does the weary woman sew, to earn a pauper's gain, while scores of gaudy spendthrifts blow their wealth for dry champagne? Why do we send the shining buck to heathen in Cathay, while in the squalid alley's muck white feet have gone astray? Such questions, in a motley crowd, at my poor mind have strained; but when I sit upon a cloud, these things will be explained.