Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/349

Rh The Mollah and the Christian dog
 * Change place in mad metempsychosis;

The Muezzin climbs the synagogue,
 * The Rabbi shakes his beard at Moses!

The Arab by his desert well
 * Sits choosing from some Caliph’s daughters,

And hears his single camel’s bell
 * Sound welcome to his regal quarters.

The Koran’s reader makes complaint
 * Of Shitan dancing on and off it;

The robber offers alms, the saint
 * Drinks Tokay and blasphemes the Prophet.

Such scenes that Eastern plant awakes;
 * But we have one ordained to beat it,

The Haschish of the West, which makes
 * Or fools or knaves of all who eat it.

The preacher eats, and straight appears
 * His Bible in a new translation;

Its angels negro overseers,
 * And Heaven itself a snug plantation!

The man of peace, about whose dreams
 * The sweet millennial angels cluster,

Tastes the mad weed, and plots and schemes,
 * A raving Cuban filibuster!

The noisiest Democrat, with ease,
 * It turns to Slavery’s parish beadle;

The shrewdest statesman eats and sees
 * Due southward point the polar needle.

The Judge partakes, and sits erelong
 * Upon his bench a railing blackguard;

Decides off-hand that right is wrong,
 * And reads the ten commandments backward.

O potent plant! so rare a taste
 * Has never Turk or Gentoo gotten;

The hempen Haschish of the East
 * Is powerless to our Western Cotton!

age is dull and mean. Men creep,
 * Not walk; with blood too pale and tame
 * To pay the debt they owe to shame;

Buy cheap, sell dear; eat, drink, and sleep