A Fable.

The cat and the dog had a quarrel,

Each claiming its tail-wag most moral,

And going it strong

That the other was wrong,

And never could hope for the laurel.

Puss argued in elegant phrases:

“The tail wasn’t made to give praises,

And wag when you’re grateful,

But savage and hateful,—

And then you should shake it like blazes.”

Then answered the clog: “Why not state your

Belief to our next Legislature.

And get them to grant you

A ‘HEARING’ — Why can’t you? —

They’d soon make a change in my nature.”

Willoughby W.

Thomas Paine’s Monument.

Thou hast no need of monument of brace,

Or that men pile up granite to the heavens

Lest thy deeds be forgotten, or thy words

Cease to he household memories. For there stands

A monument to thee erect by hate,

Enduring as is time, or love of truth,

And right, and noble deeds. For thy great deeds

Fill all the base with hate, and thy true words —

The inspiration to all noble deeds —

Make heroes of the good, and win their love.

To that cloud-piercing shaft, such adds a stone

Who claims to rule o’er man by right divine;

Or who for favor, wealth, or love of place,

Serves in the ranks that uphold tyrannies,

All who would forge a fetter for a slave,

And drive him to his unrequited toll,

Or fix a brand upon a feeble race

To breed men slaves, like cattle, for the mart,

Or would seal up the eyelids of the mind,

That men may walk in darkness, as of old,

When a blind fate, or ire of gods, made death

The penalty for knowledge. Men have built

Temples and shrines, all decorate with art,

And worshiped one as God, who cares to bring,

Not white-robed Peace, but the avenging sword,

The scourged and crucified, whose mournful cry,

“Oh why, my God, hast thou forsaken me?”

Sound down the ages; yielding up his life

But for his kindred. It was thins to brave

An ignominious death for one who knew

No claim to service or to thy regard,

Save that he was thine enemy,— a king

And the oppressor of his people. Thine

To counsel mercy to the man, but death

To the oppression only, and the claim

To rule by right divine. Thy monument?

It is the love of all the good; thy words

Of wisdom, when the counsellors were dumb;

Of courage, when the spectre of despair

Appalled the bravest. In the tented field

Where, by the campfire, naked peasants’ feet

Or hunger pled more more piteous than words;

Or where the leaders of the host were met

Despondent of the issue, and none dared

Utter the word that trembled on the lips,

Thy voice proclaimed it, and thy eloquent pen

Winged the announcement through all the land.

The starving soldier, by the flickering light

Of the red watch fire, spelled the stirring words,

And every hamlet echoed with the cry,

“The States United, Independent, Free.”

These, also, are thy monuments. But more

Than spires that reach to heaven, or flourishing States

That, with their commerce, whiten all the sear,

It this great lesson that thy life hath taught

“The State is for man, not man for the State;

And all the pomp and circumstance of state

Are but for him, and for his happiness!”

This, thy great truth, is thy best monument.

Simeon Palmer.

Theology in the Light of Sculpture.

Two little girls discussing theology in a sculptor’s studio.

First Little Girl. — “We wasn’t made out of clay like that.”

Second L. G. — “Yes, we was.”

First L. G. — “How do you know?”

Second L. G. — “The priest says so.”

First L. G. — “How does he know? Was he there?”

Second L. G. — “Well, God was.”

First L. G. — “How do you know that? You wasn’t there.”

Second L. G. — “Well, somebody was. Of course there was. Oh, ho, you silly girl! Of course somebody was.”

First L. G. — “Maybe — but — I don’t know as there was.”

— The thread of conversation was here cut by a shower of rain, and the girls scampered home.

Liberty.

Thy cause, O Liberty! can never fail.

Whether by foes o’erwhelmed or friends betrayed.

Then be its advocates of naught afraid;

As God is true, they surely shall prevail.

Let base oppressors tremble and turn pale;

They and they alone may justly be dismayed.

For Truth and Righteousness are on thy side arrayed,

And the whole world shall yet thy triumph hail!

No blow for thee was ever struck in vain;

Thy champions, martyrs, are of noble birth;

Rare honors, praises, blessings, thanks, they gain,

And time and glory magnify their worth.

A thousand times defeated, thou shalt reign

Victor, O Liberty! o’er all the earth.

“Leaves of Grass.”

Liberty has received from the publishers (James R. Osgood & Co., Boston), and joyfully welcomes “Leaves of Grass,” the collective title of Walt Whitman’s poems. It is a convenient, compact, and tastefully “got up” volume of 382 pages, and contains a number of hitherto unpublished poems, besides those of the earlier editions. “Leaves of Grass” have lost nothing of their original native simplicity, freshness, and vigor from being more carefully arranged and placed in a more artistic, though it may be a more conventional vase. The book will be more readily purchased and read, at any rate; and that is the main point. The titles of some of the poems have been changed, and the table of contents newly arranged and made much more convenient for reference to special passages.

We have not discovered that the book has lost anything of its characteristic outspoken independence, nor that any concession has been made to Mrs. Grundy. It still retains all its naked truthfulness and purity, like its prototype in marble, the Greek Slave.

Walt Whitman is preeminently, above all and before all, the poet of innovation, the poet of change, the poet of growth, the poet of evolution. There is not a drop of stagnant blood in his veins. Every fibre of him quivers with life, energy, and fire. His spirit is at the same time the spirit of content and discontent. He is satisfied with whatever is and as it is — for to-day, but not for to-morrow, nor that for any future to-morrow.

Urge and urge and urge,

Always the procreant urge of the world.

That seems to him to be the key-note of the universe.

A study, “By Blue Ontario’s Shore,” affords a good idea of what he himself considers his mission, and shows how thoroughly one in purpose that mission is with Liberty’s. He shall speak for himself from that poem.

By blue Ontario’s shore,
As I mused of these warlike days and of peace return’d, and the dead that return no more,
A Phantom gigantic superb, with stern visage accosted me,
Chant me the poem, it said, that comes from the soul of America,
Chant me the carol of victory, and strike up the marches of Libertad, marches more powerful yet,
And sing me before you go the song of the throes of Democracy.

The poet, in responding, commences with a striking bit of individual self-assertion, of which we can quote but a few lines:

A Nation announcing itself,
I myself make the only growth by which I can be appreciated,
I reject none, accept all, then reproduce all in my own forms.

We are powerful and tremendous in ourselves,
We are executive in ourselves,
We are sufficient in the variety of ourselves,
We are the most beautiful to ourselves and in on ourselves,
Nothing is sinful to us outside of ourselves,
Whatever appears, whatever does not appear, we are beautiful or sinful in ourselves only.

(O mother — O sisters dear!
If we are lost, no victory else has destroy’d us,
It is by ourselves we go down to eternal night.)

Have you thought there could be but a single supreme?
There can be any number of supremes . . .
All is eligible to all,
All is for individuals, all is for you.

Produce great Persons, the rest follows.

Then comes this attack upon Authority and conservatism:

Piety and Conformity to them that like,
Peace, obesity, allegiance, to them that like,
I am he who tauntingly compels men, women, nations,
Crying, Leap from your seats and contend for your lives;
I am he who walks the States with a barb’d tongue, questioning every one I meet,
Who are you that wanted only to be told what you knew before?

Somewhat changing the theme:

I listened to the Phantom by Ontario’s shore,
I heart the voice arising demanding bards,
By them all native and grand, by them alone can these States be fused into the compact organism of a Nation.

To hold men together by paper and seal or by compulsion is no account,
That only holds men together which aggregates all in a living principle, as the hold of the limbs of the body or the fibres of plants.

Of these States the Poet Is the equable man,
For the great Idea, the idea of perfect and free individuals,
For that the bard walks in advance, leader of leaders.
The attitude of him cheers up slaves and horrifies foreign despots.

Without extinction is Liberty, without retrograde is Equality,
They live in the feelings of young men and the best women,
(Not for nothing have the indomitable heads of the earth been always ready to fall for Liberty.)

For the great Idea,
That, O my brethren, that is the mission of poets.

A few lines to show what he claims for himself:

Give me the pay I have served for,
Give me to sing the songs of the great Idea, take all the rest.
I have loved the earth, sun, animals, I have despised riches,
Claim’d nothing to myself which I have not carefully claim’d for others on the same terms,
I am willing to wait to be understood by the growth of the taste o myself,
Rejecting none, permitting all.

We must find room for our poet’s creed of Individualism, and close therewith our quotations trom this remarkable book:

I swear I begin to see the meaning of these things,
It is not the earth, it is not America who is so great,
It is I who am great or to be great, it is you up there, or any one,
It is to walk rapidly through civilizations, governments, theories,
Through poems, pageants, shows, to form individuals,

Underneath all, individuals,
I swear nothing is good to mo that ignores individuals,
The only government is that which makes minute of individuals,
The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual — namely to you,
(Talk as you like, he only suits these States whose manners favor the audacity and sublime turbulence of the States,)
Underneath the lessons of things, spirits, Nature, governments, ownerships, I swear I perceive other lessons,
Underneath all to me in myself, to you yourself, (the same monotonous old song.)

I am for those who have never been master’d,
For men and women whose tempers have never been master’d,
For those whom laws, theories, conventions, can never master.
I am for those who walk abreast the whole earth,
Who innagurate one to inaugurate all.

I will not be out-faced by irrational things,
I will penetrate what it is in them that is sarcastic upon me,
I will make cities and civilizations defer to me,
This is what I have learn’t from America — it is the amount, and it I teach again.

(Democracy, while weapons were everywhere aim’d at your breast, I saw you serenely give birth to immortal children, saw in dreams your dilating form,
Saw you with spreading mantle covering the world.)

I will confront these shows of the day and night,
I will know if I am to be less than they,
I will see if I am not as majestic as they,
I will see if I am not as subtle and real as they,
I will see if I am to be less generous than they,
I will see if I have no meaning, while the houses and ships have meaning,
I will see if the fishes and birds are to be enough for themselves, and I am not to be enough for myself.

A Proposal.

I.

The Britons were at Yorktown

Low humbled in the dust.

It was their hardest knock-down;

It knocked heir taxing lust.

Their power to roar oppression

On Columbia’s free soil

The fathers put a stop to,

Their little game did spoil.

“Cornwallis, bring thy sword in

To Washington, the true!

Salute the Rebel’s banner,

The red, white, and blue!”

II.

The Britishers still flourish

And flaunt their “Union Jack,”

While we, their natural offspring,

No Saxon virtue lack;

So, like the dear old mother

We trashed in olden time,

While she is threshing Ireland,—

Oh! impudence sublime! —

We gather up our garments,

Swear force is no more “brute,”

And at consecrated Yorktown

Her sullied flag salute.

III.

The “gracious Queen” doth send us

Condolence for our loss;

Our Arthur o’er the ocean

Love messages doth toss.

A widower our chieftain,

Victoria’s widowed long,—

Why not combine the household,

And make one people strong?

Oh! what a glorious Union!

Pure Saxon blood would flow,

And round the world together

A-conquering we’d go!

Radicalism in Rhyme.

A Good Word for the Devil: Bible Musings by an Infidel. By Simeon Palmer. Boston 1881, pp. 136. See advertisement elsewhere.

Many attempts have been made by persons utterly unfitted for the task to paraphrase in rhyme the absurdities of the Bible, and to poetically satirize the dogmas of theology. But for the most part — yes, universally so far as we know — all these attempts have resulted in witless, vulgar, inharmonious jangles unworthy of the slightest attention. But none of these adjectives can be truthfully applied to “A Good Word for the Devil,” which, upon the whole, is one of the wittiest, cleverest, most skilful satires that we have seen for many a day. This becomes tho more surprising when it is considered that the author is an aged man, entirely inexperienced in literature except as a student. The book is written in the difficult metre adopted by Byron in “Don Juan,” and contains here and there a stanza that would not discredit that master poet. The author has a keen sense of the ridiculous, an extraordinary faculty for happily turning a phrase, und avast fund of information on all subjects connected with Biblical studies. More than this, he is a fearless thinker and outspoken writer. The work lacks method, and is marked at many points by crudities due to carelessness, both of author and printer. But it deals most effectively a rapid succession of keen thrusts and heavy blows at the Christian superstition, and deserves to be widely read. The treatment of the dogma of hell, introducing Joseph Cook I and his ingenious theory of Christ’s birth, fairly samples the faults and excellences of the work: therefore we append it.

I said that Hell had not then been invented.

We have the advantage over Bible times.

They burned or hacked the body, well contented

When death ensued; but when we’ve mocked the limbs

Or burned and buried those who have dissented,

Or won’t conform to our rehglouj whims,

We have the satisfaction of discerning,

With eye of faith, their Hell forever burning.

It would be joy to Jacob could he look

And see his brother Esan writhe in Hell,

Or Elisha see the boys the bruins shook

As a dog shakes a rat, all roasting well;

Or David, paired with Mrs. U., who took

A bath one evening, seeing him who fell

In battle by his act, show her Uriah,

Who feels that God is a consuming fire.

In this we have the advantage. Jon’than E.,

Who wrote the famous treatise on the Will,

Can look from Heaven’s battlements and see

A delicate cinder that, on earth, was El,

Or Eliery Channing. who maintained that three

Were three times one, not one, and now, in Hell

Gets his deserts. And gentle Jon’than E.

Harps louder on his harp to the blest trinity.

And J. Iscariot Cook, who once applied

The microscope to Mary, and explained

The mystery of the birth of him who died

On Calvary; that she was not impregned

By power the highest; and Old Gabriel lied

Or was mistaken; and that Mary feigned,

Or was deceived, when she broke forth in song,

Exultant that her offspring was the long

Foretold Messiah, through whose marvellous birth

All nations and all peoples should be blest,

And she should be proclaimed throughout the earth,

Happy above all mothers. Cook exprest,

Without the slightest tendency to mirth

Among his hearers, who all seemed imprest

With its importance, his belief that Jes-

Jesus was born as drones among the bees.

‘Twas partheno genesis and nothing more.

So said the latest science. Then he quoted

Jaw-breaking German gutturals; — a score

Of men to physiology devoted;

And said the person we’d been taught t’adore,

As the original Grecian word denoted,

Was a subsistence, not a person: three

Subsistences, not persons, were the trinity,

Which was a substance. Now, I cannot see

How a subsistence, which itself was nought

And could do nought, when multiplied by three,

Became the infinite God, transcending thought;

How three noughts added made infinity;

How this subsistence lived on earth and taught,

And walked about, and ate and drank and died;

Died like a man; nay, like a thief, was crucified.

Still he is confident, this Joseph C.,

That in some future state, some post-existence,

Translated into heaven, he will see,

While sitting, cheek by jowl, with th’ second subsistence,

The Devil, aided by a score of assistants,

Heaping the coals around poor Theodore P.,

While P., like Lazarus’ friend, begs Joe for water,

And Joe will see him damned first, as he oughter.

Provided always Joe can find some screen

To hang between his past and God Almighty,

So that the damning record can’t be seen.

The black and hideous record sua vita,

He hinted at, when lecturing yestreen,

In the “Old South,” when Standing Bear and Bright-eye

And ghosts, as thick as leaves in Vallambrosa,

“Declared” he must have been damned fast, this Joe, sir.

Proviso 2, that Joseph ia sustained

In his queer notions of the trinity,

By his Triune: for Joseph would be pained

Should it turn out that the Divinity

Is not a triplet; and that he impregned

Miss M., and, proud of his paternity,

Resents the insult that the heir to the throne

Is not one whit superior to a drone.

But Joseph’s dumb; that is, upon this theme.

He’s dropped the subject, never mentions it.

He knocked the key-stone out from the grand scheme;

The brethren were disgusted with it, quite.

The clergy thought him, upon this point, lame.

‘T would bring upon the sect a perfect blight.

Jesus no father? God no son? What next?

Then all religion was but a pretext.

GARIBALDI

Once the Cyclopean king the poets sung
Was Etna's beacon of eternal light
That led the grateful mariner along
The trackless desert of the sea, when night
And storm and darkness o'er the planet hung
Their mantle, ere the needle's marvelous sight
Tracked through the gloom the pole star, and revealed
To the foiled pilot's ken where 'twas concealed.

But in our day flames on Caprera's shore
A beacon brighter than old Etna's ray,
That signals, "Italy's long night is o'er,
And there has dawned for her a brighter day
Than when upon Rome's seven hills late power
That held a world in awe: the gracious away
Of reason, truth, and right, and liberty."
This precious boon Italia owes to thee.

Brave Garibaldi! And the time will come
When Caprera will be to men a shrine
More sacred than the prophet's honored tombs
At Mecca, or the mount in Palestine
Where died the fabled Savior. But no gloom
Will cast its shadow o'er our lives from thine,
More than thy country's saviour, whom men bless
As freedom's champion, lover of thy race!

OH, FIRE!

Oh! Fire no eyes beholdeth,
Ere planets were begun
Kindled within the Inmost-
Fierce, flaming, blazing sun!

Oh, Fire whost heat preserveth
The Truth of truth alive!
Then givest to Being beauty;
All souls by thee survive.

Oh, Fire aye melting heaven,
And burning up the earth -
'Tis by thy fierce endeavor
Now, Liberty hath birth.

                                                                          M.

TO WALT WHITMAN.

At last, O Walt, you are endorsed; no more
Your muse of the shadow of neglect will feel.
The "Atlantic Monthly" squirts have their seal
To your credentials: your probation 'a o'er
Be happy, then, O bard, and drink galore;
Your "yawp" is classic now, if ne'er before.
'Tis true that long ago the great Reviews
Of Albion halled with joy your new-world muse
As native here and to the manor born.
The "satin-and-patchouly" bards their scorn.
Still vented on your long, unmeasured little,
Ruffled in wrath their borrowed feathers fine
At "Leaves of Grass" and mention of your name,
Though Tennyson, their master, owned your fame.

B.

The Poetry of Places.

BY WILLOUGHBY WIGGIN.

"Places," observes the dramatist Pythagoras, "are often poetical, and poetry is sometimes local." Great hearts, like Spenser's, are frequently attached by cords which they cannot sever to a garret, a cellar, or a hovel; but their furniture and other valuables have sometimes been separated from them by a still stronger attachment. Poets seldom go to law; the law generally goes to them.

The poetry of places if often very charming, sometimes even more so than the places themselves. It may be divided into two general classes, namely, I-am-bic and the You-dam-bic. We will omit the consideration of the first for the present, and proceed to examine the second. You-dam-bic poetry was almost unknown to the ancients; and, though it may be found in a rudimentary form in other countries, it has been chiefly cultivated in the United States, where it may be found in its highest perfection. The extreme delicacy of this species of poetic composition admirably fits it for a place in the literature of a free county. So frail and tender is its constitution that it has never been known to flourish among the rigors of despotic governments like Great Britain and France. It droops and fades beneath the blighting shadows of oppression, but blossoms out in all its beauty and glory when caressed by the atmosphere of freedom, and nourished by the encouraging rays of the sun of republican liberty. Here, where great cities spring up as if by magic, there is a true local rivalry, never before equaled in intensity, that fires the heart of enthusiasm and arouses a poetic frenzy in the breast of the humblest inhabitants. Take, for example, the following pathetic lines, which we recently found in the columns of a St. Louis newspaper, the able "Cube-Courtier:"

There was a Miss Blank in Chicawgah
Who started a-courting, but maugre
She pleaded her cases
In satin and lace,
She couldn't earn pretzels and lawger.

Alfred Tennyson himself never gave us a verse like that, and we hazard the prediction that he never will. He has, perhaps, surpassed it in mere melodiousness; but poetry is more than bare music: it is sentiment rhythmically expressed. And the exquisite perfection of the verse before us culminates in a refined and tender human sympathy, which, like an atmosphere, envelops and permiates the entire stanza, but whose efflorescent bloom is completed in the closing line. Take another example, which I find in an Eastern paper, accredited to the Chicago "Nadir-Zenith:"

There was a young man in St. Louis
Whose doctor confined him to brewis:
He lived for a season,
But soon lost his reason,
And married a pawnbreaking Jewess.

This, though scarcely so delicate as the other verse, is remarkable for the intellectual grasp it displays, a grasp combined with subtle refinement of thought and unusual purity and depth of emotion. It evinces the classic serenity of Bryant united with the turbid grandeur of Bryon; the simplicity and repose of Longfellow with the abstruse profundity and even the inimitable punctuationality (there ought to be such a word) of Mrs. Piatt. The second line is, by far, the most affecting: the heartless decree of the unfeeling physician, and then, - the meagreness of the diet, and in such a country! But the logical necessity of the catastrophe and final denouement is not paralleled within the entire range of modern art. You can see the whole scene before you: the loan-office filled with all sorts of trumpery, the three gilded balls over the door, the anotely crowd hurrying by on the street, and, at the far extremity of establishment, the ghost-like figure, a mere shadow in the dim gloom of the apartment, leaning mysteriously forward ever the anoque desk in the very act of making out a ticket! Or again, what could be more touching than this from the "Daily Diary"?

Folks in Chicago
Try to make hog go
For vension, rabit, and beef:
But something they find
It's nothing but rind,-
And then the poor cats come to grief

Matthew Arnold says that Homer is noble, and, on the whole, perhaps he is right, with certain important qualifications; but genuine nobility was almost unknown to the ancients, and has been fully developed only by the lofty school of bards whom we are now considering. Has Mr. Arnold ever examined the poetry in question? The naivete with which he asserts that Homer is noble plainly indicates that he has not. He means, no doubt, - and so far he is correct, - that, if real nobility of style and thought had been known to the Greeks, Homer would probably have been noble. But just here we wish to caution Mr. Arnold, and the flippant English litterateurs who take him as a model, not to be rash in their assertions; for callow literary criticism is almost certain, sooner or later, like the unhappy felines of Chicago, to "come to grief." A man like Mr. Arnold cannot afford to lose his reputation by a slip, a mere lapsus pinguis* like the one to which we have just referred. But we digress. We quote the following from the "Weakly Weekly," which, save in critiques, admits verse to its columns only in those rare cases where extraordinary merit absolutely forbids exclusion:

Down in St. Louis
All they can do is
Make shoes for their girls' clumsy pedals;
Their feet are so large
As an updriven barge,
With ankles as slender as needles.

Note the temperate moderation of these lines. The true poet is always easy and natural. He never exaggerates, never strains a point. And observe how he condenses. A mere versifier would have thiamed out the tropical luxuriance of this passage into fifty or a hundred lines. The most skillful chiropodist could not treat this delicate theme with more tenderness, and the description of the ankles is Spenscrian, or rather, it is, by far, a finer simile than Spenser ever conceived. Spenser wrote tolerable English for his day, but he was too matter-of-fact for subtle and refined concepts. Still, he deserves our gratitude, for, like a true poet, he died of starvation in a garret. We sincerely hope the noble bards on whose writings we have been decanting may all speedily have an opportunity to imitate his example; and we will conclude by suggesting to all younge aspirants, like the poet of the "Weekly," that the female form divine is the best figure to begin with, for, in the words of the classic couplet of the gentle poet of Florence, Macchiavelli,-

"In the vast scope of lore, divine and human,
The noblest study of mankind is woman."

*Lapsus pinguis, a slip, or want of fulness, that is, knowledge. See Kikero, "De Senectati," MDCXL, 2, 3, 4, 5.

NAMES.

Names are indeed but smoke that hide the glow

Of heaven, the poisonous breath of ages flown,
When neither earth nor heaven were truly known
And roof'd fond man a godful sky-arch low.
Though that is gone, dull bigots still repeat
The empty formula of creeds outworn,
As if to fixed ideas the race was born
And Dulness o'er us held perpetual seat.
Blow, breath of Reason, with a cyclone's might,

And sweep the rubbish of the past away!
While earthwide flashes thy meridian day,
Purging of every tribe the mental sight,
Cumber the earth too long a Church and State
Which own no ties with things of current date.

B.