 | ["Sometimes a menagerie comes to this door", in] Sketches and Reminiscences of the Radical Club of Chestnut Street, Boston |  |
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[Sometimes a menagerie comes to this door]
Sometimes a menagerie comes to this door,With birds that can sing and lions that roar.
Through all the long morning they bellow and sing
Till the Queen of the caravan enters the ring;
Her smile she distributes, her rations she shares
'Mid the lambs and the lions, the bores and the bears.
To make them as docile as doves she is able,
With a glance of her eye, or a glimpse of her table;
Each anxious logician grows gay as a ballad
When she offers a morsel of soothing or salad.
He forgets in a moment his creeds and his causes
When she feeds him with apples or cheers with applauses.
Mr. A--- reverts to the Banquet of Plato;
The tea-urn plays censer to P---'s Cato;
W--- brings with him salt that the Attic surpasses,
And W--- disdains not to lunch with the masses.
Each favorite idol is laid on the shelf,
Mrs. H--- forgets Hegel, and everyone, self.
| ["Sometimes a menagerie comes to this door", in] Sketches and Reminiscences of the Radical Club of Chestnut Street, Boston | |