Shapes of Clay

Despots effete upon tottering thrones

Unsteadily poised upon dead men's bones,

Walk up! walk up! the circus is free,

And this wonderful spectacle you shall see:

Millions of voters who mostly are fools—

Demagogues' dupes and candidates' tools,

Armies of uniformed mountebanks,

And braying disciples of brainless cranks.

Many a week they've bellowed like beeves,

Bitterly blackguarding, lying like thieves,

Libeling freely the quick and the dead

And painting the New Jerusalem red.

Tyrants monarchical—emperors, kings,

Princes and nobles and all such things—

Noblemen, gentlemen, step this way:

There's nothing, the Devil excepted, to pay,

And the freaks and curios here to be seen

Are very uncommonly grand and serene.

No more with vivacity they debate,

Nor cheerfully crack the illogical pate;

No longer, the dull understanding to aid,

The stomach accepts the instructive blade,

Nor the stubborn heart learns what is what

From a revelation of rabbit-shot;

And vilification's flames—behold!

Burn with a bickering faint and cold.

Magnificent spectacle!—every tongue

Suddenly civil that yesterday rung

(Like a clapper beating a brazen bell)

Each fair reputation's eternal knell;

Hands no longer delivering blows,

And noses, for counting, arrayed in rows.

Walk up, gentlemen—nothing to pay—

The Devil goes back to Hell to-day.