George Gordon, Lord Byron, 'Don Juan'

[duathir.livejournal.com]

Don Juan

Oh, Gold! Why call we misers miserable?
Theirs is the pleasure that can never pall;
Theirs is the best bower-anchor, the chain-cable
Which holds fast other pleasures great and small.
Ye who but see the saving man at table
And scorn his temperate board, as none at all,
And wonder how the wealthy can be sparing,
Know not what visions spring from each cheese-paring.…

( Perhaps he hath great projects in his mind )

The Society upon the Stanislaus, by Bret Harte

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

The Society upon the Stanislaus

I RESIDE at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;
I am not up to small deceit, or any sinful games;
And I’ll tell in simple language what I know about the row
That broke up our Society upon the Stanislow.

But first I would remark, that it is not a proper plan
For any scientific gent to whale his fellow man,
And, if a member don’t agree with his peculiar whim,
To lay for that same member for to “put a head” on him.

Now, nothing could be finer or more beautiful to see
Than the first six months’ proceedings of that same society,
Till Brown of Calaveras brought a lot of fossil bones
That he found within a tunnel near the tenement of Jones.

Then Brown he read a paper, and he reconstructed there,
From those same bones an animal that was extremely rare,
And Jones then asked the chair for a suspension of the rules,
Till he could prove that those same bones was one of his lost mules.

Then Brown he smiled a bitter smile, and said he was at fault;
It seemed he had been trespassing on Jones’s family vault;
He was a most sarcastic man, this quiet Mr. Brown,
And on several occasions he had cleaned out the town.

Now, I hold it is not decent for a scientific gent
To say another is an ass—at least, to all intent;
Nor should the individual who happens to be meant
Reply by heaving rocks at him to any great extent.

( Then Abner Dean of Angel’s raised a point of order—when )