The Bee's Bayonet (a Little Honey and a Little Sting)

"I get my hair by camel-train":
But all his "hair" was cut in Maine—
Excelsior!

And then a fire occurred at length
To bolster Crook's financial strength:
The glue that mocked the incensed air
Mistaken was for burning hair;
Excelsior!

Beware the pine-tree's fibrous heart!
But this gave Crook his fiscal start,
And now a tall, pine shaft is seen
Above Crook's grave; 'tis evergreen—
Excelsior!

HER AND HIM

Her

To-day's her birthday: I'll not say which one,—
But I have known her twenty years or more
When courtship days were joyously begun,
And she had reached her sixteenth year, before.

And so her age is no concern of mine:
She may have dropped a birthday now and then,
But surely she's improved with age like wine:
I wouldn't wish her in her teens again.

And she's my Pal! O, yes, we love, of course!
But feel, besides, the joy of comradeship
That finds expression at Love's very source
In language of the heart—not of the lip.

And so she is my everlasting pride:
To Beauty's very pinnacle she's grown!
Thru life we'll seek our pleasures side by side;
Her heart athrob with love for me alone.

Him

O, yes! we're splendid friends, Old Jack and I:
He's growing grave and wrinkles now appear
Where once the smiles his cheeks were wont to ply.
He's losing all his energy, I fear.

I married him some twenty years ago
When dancing was a chief delight of his;
But now alone I trip the Terpsic toe,
For poor, old Jack has got the rheumatiz.

He's aging fast: I see it every day!
He's fat and short of breath, yet how he snores!
His few remaining hairs are saffron-grey,
For nicotine keeps oozing from his pores.

He seems so childish, but I humor him
Altho my friends declare I'm such a dunce.
Wrinkled, rheumatic; bare of brains and vim—
Good-bye, Old Jack! You were a good one once!

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIVING

We bivouac here and barely get acquainted
Until the furlough ends; then we are sainted,
Whether our acts deserve rebuke or praise.
When we are dead the recollection stays
Of virtues only: vices are excused,
But to the living pardon is refused.
And yet, alive, I'd rather be unsung,
Than any Saint the catacombs among.
Tho critics flay me and the censors sneer,
'Twere better so, than praises on my bier.
And so we walk life's slender rope till, bing!
We slip and fall or someone cuts the string.
Ambition lures us, but the pinkest peach
Is always just beyond us, out of reach:
And when, at last, we think we are in line
To cross the threshold, lo! the Full House sign.
We never quite obtain the golden urn
Tho rainbows beckon every way we turn.
Who ever found, I ask you, all he sought?
Our best endeavors ofttimes come to naught:
And yet we trudge along, loath to confess
We're only groping in a wilderness;
Plodding the sands that burn our feet, and hurt;
Seeking the Promised Land, our just desert.
Had Cæsar reached the zenith of his life
When Brutus cut his friendship with the knife?
The ladder broke and he was headlong flung
While setting foot upon the topmost rung.
Thus picture Cæsar giving up the ghost
Just when he reached the pinnacle, almost!
Did Bonaparte receive his proper due?
He got it, but too late, at Waterloo.
He played with fire, aroused the seething crater,
And now, with Nick, inhabits the Equator.
So we conclude, delving the lines between,
He might as well have clung to Josephine.