EMPIRE BUILDING
How you would push her out, and there would stay,
With eyes uplifted, as you seemed to pray—
Ah! when, indeed, I most mistrusted you
Was when you prayed, whose Trinity I knew
The scrubbing brush, the belly, and the purse,
All badly served. Your cleanliness a curse
Of little minds, that have no thoughts to fill
The chambers of their brain, and have no will
But service to the petty things of life,
Destroy sweet Calm with their incessant strife,
Cleaning, yet never clean, they ever seek
To whiten sepulchres. Your table rude
With all its ill-prepared and heavy food
To feed your dull yet eager appetite.
Your purse well filled can shrink or can expand
To thirty silver pieces in your hand.
Yet, John, I must admit in many ways
You have your virtues not devoid of praise.
Could I forget sweet Kate who lived next door,
With sweetest eyes and snowy pinafore.
She was of finer clay—a child of dreams
Who knew the secret songs of hills and streams.
Made from the passions of the four great seas,
Lithe as the swaying of the storm-swept trees,
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