Henry Rabeneau

To be gay, free, to be a liver,
To see through the cant of service;
To hoot effectively the uplifter;
To know that life is a jest;
And man a germ amid bread and roaring,
kicking off the ropes of the dwarfs,
Breaking the chains of the New Jerusalemites.
To smile at all pgilosophies and religions,
As the mind wanderings of starving wits.
To be a fat and lusty weed,
Flaunting insolent leaves-
Then to have the dwarfs get you,
and cover you with their ideas of dishonor,
until infinite disgust rots you,
and your wither and lisp and break,
Frost bitten and dusted over.
That was I, fellow citizens
until in the hour of death
One moment of myself, gay and free,
and insolent, returned in a laugh!