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Title: A Crushed Hero
Author: Joseph Crosby Lincoln [
More Titles by Lincoln]
On a log behind the pigsty of a modest little farm,
Sits a freckled youth and lanky, red of hair and long of arm;
But his mien is proud and haughty and his brow is high and stern,
And beneath their sandy lashes, fiery eyes with purpose burn.
Bow before him, gentle reader, he's the hero we salute,
He is Hiram Adoniram Andrew Jackson Shute.
Search not Fame's immortal marbles, never there his name you'll find,
For our hero, let us whisper, is a hero in his mind;
And a youth may bathe in glory, wade in slaughter time on time,
When a novel, wild and gory, may be purchased for a dime.
And through reams of lurid pages has he slain the Sioux and Ute,
Bloody Hiram Adoniram Andrew Jackson Shute.
Hark, a heavy step advancing,--list, a father's angry cry,
"He hain't shucked a single nubbin; where's that good-fer-nothin' Hi?"
"Here, base catiff," comes the answer, "here am I who was your slave,
But no more I'll do your shuckin', though I fill a bloody grave!
Freedom's fire my breast has kindled; there'll be bloodshed, tyrant! brute!"
Quoth brave Hiram Adoniram Andrew Jackson Shute.
"Breast's a-blazin', is it, Sonny?" asks his father with a smile,
"Kind er like a stove, I reckon, what they call 'gas-burner' style.
Good 'base-burner' 's what your needin'"--here he pins our hero fast,
"Come, young man, we'll try the woodshed, keep the bloodshed till the
last."
Then an atmosphere of horse-whip, interspersed with cow-hide boot,
Wraps young Hiram Adoniram Andrew Jackson Shute.
* * * * *
Weep ye now, oh, gentle reader, for the fallen, great of heart,
As ye wept o'er Saint Helena and the exiled Bonaparte;
For a picture, sad as that one, to your pity I would show
Of a spirit crushed and broken,--of a hero lying low;
For where husks are heaped the highest, working swiftly, hushed and mute,
Shucketh Hiram Adoniram Andrew Jackson Shute.
[The end]
Joseph Crosby Lincoln's poem: Crushed Hero
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