My days and nights of labor done,
Come over, friends, and meet my son;
This product of my fancy wild,
You'll find him, perhaps, a forward child—
With caustic quips and vulgar rhymes—
He was conceived in sinful times
And poisoned by life's foul air—
It's shocking, ma'am, to hear him swear
And rave in manner unrefined—
His father had an outlawed mind.
He was not born like any other,
The poor boy never had a mother.
Would you expect the normal where
There lacks a mother's loving care?
Could he be gentle like the rest,
Flung from a father's bitter breast?
And yet there's points about the child
That might excuse his seeming wild,
His lack of tact, restraint, devotion—
He is a product of emotion
And life to him is not what it seems—
His days are spent in wildest dreams,
And on his pillow, half the night
He worries over wrong and right.
A fisher fills his net some morn—
The prize from him is quickly torn.
A murderer hangs—a poor man he—
A wealthy murderer goes free.
The miners dug yon bank of coal,
But that same day 'twas from them stole.
A child outside wedlock is born—
Alone the mother bears the scorn.
Observing this, my child must then
Much marvel at the ways of men,
And from his pages, leaf by leaf,
He will labor to expose the thief;
Poor innocent will strive to show
To men what they already know,
And what they choose to tolerate—
Abuse of power by the great,
The slaughtered right, the nourished wrong,
The tortured weak, the pampered strong—
Poor foolish child, to worry so
About the world and all its woe;
Lay down your pen, I charge you, boy,
It is a silly useless toy;
That pen's too blunt, that ink too thin
To heal a world so steeped in sin.
And is the effort worth the time
One spends in protest and in rhyme?
As gaily pass the careless crowd
Some are heard to laugh aloud
As those who hate to hear the truth—
And all ignore the wailing youth.
For of his lineage 'tis said
His father was a horrid Red;
My literary race is run
I swear I'll breed no other son.
Dance on, old mad and dizzy earth,
I'll strangle my next book at birth—
"A worthy deed—small loss," says you
"You should have strangled this one too!"
