Cried Allen Forman: ‘Doctor, pray

And dread necessity of food, your shore,Fair Oakland, is a terror. Over allYour sunny level, from TamaletownTo where the Pestuary’s fragrant slime,With dead dogs studded, bears its ailing fleet,Broods the still menace of starvation. BonesOf men and women bleach along the waysAnd pampered vultures sleep upon the trees.It is a land of death, and Famine…

Now wherefore, venerable sir,So resolutely gay?He lifts his head, he laughs aloud,Odzounds! ’tis drear to see!‘Because the Boodle-Scribbler crowdWill soon be far from me.‘Full many a year I’ve striven wellTo freeze the caitiffs outBy making this good town a Hell,But still they hang about.‘They maken mouths and eke they grinAt the dollar limit game;And they…

Every hour renounces one of them by drinking liquid flameThe assassinating wassail that has given him his name;Where the enterprising dealer in Caucasian hair is seenTo hold his harvest festival upon his village-green,While the late lamented tenderfoot upon the plain is spreadWith a sanguinary circle on the summit of his head;Where the cactuses (or cacti)…

And red are cheeks of the bystandersFor her acts are light and free.In a seven-ounce costumeThe widow of Thomas Blythe,Y-perched high on the window ledge,The difficult can-can tryeth.Ten constables they essayTo bate the dame’s halloing.With the widow of Thomas BlytheTheir hands are overflowing,And they cry: ‘Call the National GuardTo quell this parlous muss-For all of…

And in a jeremaid of objurgatory warningHe lifted up his _jodel_ to the following effect:O ye sanguinary statesmen, intermit your verbal tusslesO ye editors and orators, consent to hear my lay!And a little while the digital and maxillary musclesAnd attend to what a Venerable Person has to say.Cease your writing, cease your shouting, cease your…

Then the domestic dog, to east and west,Expounds the passions burning in his breast.The rising moon o’er that enchanted landPauses to hear and yearns to understand.