The fool and the knave and the righteous now bore Witness how vast were the genius and lore Enabled our lawyer all depths to explore, And in calm or tempest to pull the best oar (For those who had sneered were as quick to adore After Fame's blaring trumpet had opened its roar); And though it wrung anguish from every pore, Since his service brought plenty to their greedy door, Where the famine for many lean years had been sore, They paid him large fees — many thousands or more — With ungrumbling promptness unheard of before!
Was he happy at last, with his fame and his wealth, His Atlas-like burden, his fast failing health, That most of life's pleasures had laid on the shelf? You shall judge. I once heard him sigh to himself,
Yet in heart they were ingrates : most litigants see Little worth in their counsel, and rarely bend knee To their temporal savior, whate'er his degree, Or however earnest or listless may be Their love for the One who walked down to the sea, And met his first followers by deep Galilee; And though in all other things generous and free, They pay with reluctance his hardest-earned fee; For they think success due to their oivn worth, and the Absence of it in their crushed enemy.
"Too late have these fools sought my ser vices here!" (He brushed from his pale, shrunken cheek the hot tear.) "I 've purchased their favor with life's blood, I fear; But 't will lighten the burden of those I hold dear, And that thought will solace when Death hovers near, That still is far distant by many a year, Despite this depression, or I am no seer ' Though nigh to the cradle wait coffin and bier, For me 't will be long ere their herald appear!
His practice now grew so extensive and great That wealth flowed upon him through every gate; And never was lawyer so favored by Fate, As the envious world said, forgetting how late On Time's rapid calendar was the sad date When his bread had no butter, and no meat his plate,
While Townsend and Ingalls, Law's whitehaired, gay thralls, Whose years sit so burdenless no task appalls, Perform giant labors where active life calls, / 7/ not lag superfluous, whatever befalls, But force to the finish a good fight, like Paul's; For sloth, more than serfdom, the earnest soul galls!"
And the long, weary years she condemned him to wait Before condescending to better his state, With Poverty holding a grim tfte-ei-tite, His passions an roused by the angry de bate, And twisting his mustache, despairing, irate, As herein your poet, without love or hate For him, or intending to extenuate His faults or malign him, has tried to narrate.
