A line-o'-verse or two

He knelt and prayed, then up and flayed
His sinful flesh in a righteous rage.

Whacketty-whack on breast and back,
Whacketty-whack, before, behind;
But he held the thought as he laid it on,
“Pain is merely a state of mind.”

Whacketty-whack on breast and back,
Whacketty-whack on calf and shin;
And the lay-brothers said, with a wag of the head,
“Ain’t he the glutton for discipline!”

Now every night our anchorite
Was exceedingly tight when he went to bed.
The scourge that once pained him no longer restrained him,
Nor even the fear of an aching head.

For he woke at morn with a pate as clear
As the silvery chime of the matin bell;
And without any jogging he fell to his flogging,
And larruped himself in his lonely cell.

But the leather had lost its power to sting;
To pangs of the flesh he was now immune;
His rough hair shirt no longer hurt,
Nor the pebbles he wore in his wooden shoon.

When conscience was troubled he cheerfully doubled
His matinal dose of discipline; —
A deuce of a scourging, sufficient for purging
The Devil himself of original sin.

Whacketty-whack on breast and back,
Whacketty-whack from morn to noon;
Whacketty-whacketty-whacketty-whack! —
Till the abbey rang with the dismal tune.

Deacon and prior, lay-brother and friar
Exclaimed at these whoppings spectacular;
And even the Abbot remarked that the habit
Of scourging oneself might be carried too far.

“My son,” said he, “I am pleased to see
Such penance as never was known before;
But you raise such a racket in dusting your jacket,
The noise is becoming a bit of a bore.

“How would it do if you whaled yourself
From eight to ten or from one to three?
Or if ‘More’ is your motto, pray hire a grotto;
I know of one you can have rent free.”

Ambrose the anchorite bowed his head,
And girded his loins and went away.
He rented a cavern not far from a tavern,
And tippled by night and scourged by day.

The more the penance the more the sin,
The more he whopped him the more he drank;
Till his hair fell out and his cheeks fell in,
And his corpulent figure grew long and lank.

At Whitsuntide he up and died,
While flaying himself for his final spree.
And who shall say whether ’twas liquor or leather
That hurried him into eternity?

They made him a saint, as well they might,
And gave him a beautiful aureole.
And – somehow or other, this circle of light
Suggests the rim of the Flowing Bowl.

TO A TALL SPRUCE

Pride of the forest primeval,
Peer of the glorious pine,
Doomed to an end that is evil,
Fearful the fate that is thine!

Peer of the glorious pine,
Now the landlooker has found you,
Fearful the fate that is thine —
Fate of the spruces around you.

Now the landlooker has found you,
Stripped of your beautiful plume —
Fate of the spruces around you —
Swiftly you’ll draw to your doom.

Stripped of your beautiful plume,
Bzzng! into logs they will whip you.
Swiftly you’ll draw to your doom;
To the pulp mill they will ship you.

Bzzng! into logs they will whip you,
Lumbermen greedy for gold.
To the pulp mill they will ship you.
Hearken, there’s worse to be told!