Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 01.pdf/413

370 From those old days to this, appears
 * This symbol of the vernal hue,

In verse and romance we may trace
 * Its presence all the ages through.

Kit Marlowe knew it, Cibber too,
 * And Dickens oft has well portrayed

The barrister with his green bag
 * And robe and wig for court arrayed.

We see him now, as through the gloom
 * And fog of London town he goes;

To Lincoln's Inn he trudges on,
 * His stern, knit brows his wisdom shows.

And in his hand he's clasping close
 * A bag of green, the texture thin,

'T is made of baize, its size about
 * The same they now put fiddles in.

A fitting satire on the times,
 * And these degenerated days,

When lawyers use the bag no more
 * And fiddlers ape their ancient ways.

We look adown the path of time
 * The gray old world has slowly crept,

Where many a dear old custom lies
 * By the wayside where it long has slept;

What 's left us of the old green bag—
 * That sterling friend in days of yore?

Naught but its wraith, to symbolize
 * The law and lawyers evermore!

Though faded with the active scenes
 * Which saw its worth in ages past,

Like dead heroes whose histories
 * Their grandeur tells while time doth last,

The old green bag is with us now,
 * In reverent mem'ry strong outlined,

A symbol of the precious freight
 * That lawyers carry for mankind.

The bag is full of wondrous things,
 * All, creatures of the fertile brains

Of those who twist a nation's laws
 * To bind or loose the felon's chains.

There are the papers to the suits,
 * The writs, and pleas, and arguments;

Drawn ill or done with learned skill,
 * Of void or potent consequence.

Pandora never felt the pulse
 * Of expectation's anxious thrill,

Like him who looks into his bag
 * To find his fate for good or ill.

No treasure-box of pirate bold,
 * Nor iron-bound coffers of a king,

Holds half the precious freightage that
 * Is hidden in this eerie thing.

How oft the destinies of men
 * Are shapen to their final ends,

Perverted to a sorrier lot
 * Than nature otherwise intends!

Accused of crimes they wot not of,
 * By circumstances seeming plain,

Their foreheads bear the felon's brand,
 * Their good names hidden 'neath stain.

There are the written documents,
 * The pleas for justice and relief,

The brittle or the trenchant blades
 * Which win the fight or bring to grief.

These scrawled sheets, in diction grave,
 * For many a life they win a lease;

They flutter in and out of court,
 * White-winged messengers of peace.

And nestling in the bag we find
 * The widow's and the orphan's cause

Set forth with righteous earnestness,
 * To win protection from our laws.

The oppressed and helpless are alike
 * Saved from the avarice of men;

The miser's canting tyranny
 * Slinks whining to its rayless den.

The poor and struggling yeomanry
 * Who wrench a pittance from the soil,

Are snatched from jaws of two grim wolves
 * Which rend the fruits of all their toil;

One wolf is "Gnawing Hunger" and
 * The other has a milder name,

A "Landlord's Mortgage" it is called,
 * But both have fangs which crush the same

Like those who watch for ships at sea,
 * Which come not while the slow years lag,

So these sad ones with lustrous eyes,
 * Gaze, wistful, for the old green bag.