(A MINOR.)
YE GODS assist! aid me ye heav’nly nine!
Let all your pow’rs cooperate with mine,
Justly to celebrate the theme divine
Of woman hatching into masculine.
From high empyrean descend, ye Graces,
If there ye dwell, (if not where’er the place is,—)
Unlock, ye Sciences, ye Arts, prepare
Donations rich from water earth and air!
Unite, O Poesy, in one bright chain
All metaphors both sacred and profane!
Fuse, all ye elements, for this my story
In one great holocaust to female glory.
So may the bard in worthy style proclaim
The Amazonian honor, name, and fame;
And so to all posterity transmit
Those deeds redoubtable in measures fit,—
That wond’rous story, born on earthly sod,
Disperse through all the universe of God.
I sing the birth of th’ Amazonian age
Whose rampant outcoming may well engage
The philosophic thought of wrinkled sage,
The poets flippant measure, and the page
Where history records, with equal care,
The most important and the least affair.
No feeble, helpless waif was born that day,—
Feeling to life, its weak uncertain way,
With gentle breath, a thought of heav’n that lingers,
Kissing its velvet lips and waxen fingers.
But, sooth to say, a fierce volcanic child
Tore into being, amid orgies wild.
Begot of unrest, conceived of unreason,
Carried in envy and born out of season,
It burst on the world a monster, a fright,
A meteor baleful, a mildew and blight,
A terror, like the fabled torch of yore
A mother dreaming, in speechless anguish bore;
A Ghoul, half human, shapeless monster half,
Not quite a kangaroo, not quite giraffe,
With countless social improprieties,
Weak indiscretions, contrarieties—
A bundle of irregularities
With woman’s skin to wrap its rarities.
A child of many hopes which proved to be
A harpy foul of evil augury.
Its upper half boxer—like brawny and strong,
The members termed nether were scrawny and long;
And ended in fixtures quite fit for its trade—
Huge talons, like buzzard’s, for tearing things, made.
It’s nose might have stood for a Monitor’s pride,—
A cutwater shapely to buffet the tide,
With “noli me tangere” carved deep and wide
In wrinkles upturning with scorn either side.
The tongue was a marvel of skill and design;
’Twas snake like and forked, but the forkings were nine,
A complicate unit, a digitate thing.
Each digit played loose, and was armed with a sting
Which was death—the whole waved like banner unfurled
From its foam-covered mouth, defiantly curled—
A gulf that was yawning to swallow a world.
Carnivora genus ’twas easy to see,
Whose serrated tushes, tho’ frightful may be,
Could rip reputation, in style mighty free.
Its caudal appendage, reluctant to show,
Sharp-pointed, like workers’ in brimstone below,
Curves fiercely behind it, and, lashing the air
Shall sting itself writhing in final despair.
Me Hercle! what simile, metaphor true,
The vision can render that breaks on the view,
When upward we wander and meditate where
The glory of woman is crowned by her hair?
The muse is uncertain, but rather prefers
The quills of the hedgehog with some kind of burrs,
Whose clinging tenacity savors of what
When speaking of woman is never forgot;—
Which scatter a shower of deadliest darts
From arsenal copious of stingings and smarts,
O’er optics that twinkle with serpent-like arts.
So, coming at random, unblest by the bans,
’Twas fondled by Katies, and coddled by Fans,
And doctored according to recentest plans;
To embraces bony was savagely folded,
On bosoms of granite was badgered and scolded.
The grannies in order to properly breed it,
At outset like christians endeavored to feed it,
But vainly; for, scorning all patent-right fixtures,
Soft pap it rejected, and baby-milk mixtures.
Away with your catnip, ye wrinkled viragos!
Your soothing concoctions, your sops and your sagos—
Give syrups of pepper, not weakly diluted,
And waters of Marah—they’re charmingly suited
Impulses to quicken, not easy computed.
For solids use thistles, and thorns, and rough brambles—
The fodder that asses collect in their rambles.
A cabbage to give it agreeable savor,
Is found in the meadows, of suitable flavor.
Thus forage and fluids, with caution selected,
’Tis like, in the temper, will ripen reflected.
One species of felines in manner befitting
Will show in the impulse for scratching and spitting.
Another polemic Grimalkin, I’ll venture,
Peculiar sensation will wake by its stench, or
There’s nothing in breeding, and feeding, and teaching,
As doctors in physics and ethics are preaching.
Such regimen followed, with strictest attention,
Will breed you more squabbles than scribblers can mention.