If a man could bite the giant handThat catches and destroys him,As I was bitten by a ratWhile demonstrating my patent trap,In my hardware store that day.But a man can never avenge himselfOn the monstrous ogre Life.You enter the room—that’s being born;And then you must live—work out your soul,Aha! the bait that you crave is in view:A woman with money you want to marry,Prestige, place, or power in the world.But there’s work to do and things to conquer—Oh, yes! the wires that screen the bait.At last you get in—but you hear a step:
She took my strength by minutes,She took my life by hours,She drained me like a fevered moonThat saps the spinning world.The days went by like shadows,The minutes wheeled like stars.She took the pity from my heart,And made it into smiles.She was a hunk of sculptor’s clay,My secret thoughts were fingers:They flew behind her pensive browAnd lined it deep with pain.They set the lips, and sagged the cheeks,And drooped the eye with sorrow.My soul had entered in the clay,Fighting like seven devils.
The sudden death of Eugene CarmanPut me in line to be promoted to fifty dollars a month,And I told my wife and children that night.But it didn’t come, and so I thoughtOld Rhodes suspected me of stealingThe blankets I took and sold on the sideFor money to pay a doctor’s bill for my little girl.Then like a bolt old Rhodes accused me,And promised me mercy for my family’s sakeIf I confessed, and so I confessed,And begged him to keep it out of the papers,And I asked the editors, too.That night at home the constable took meAnd every paper, except the Clarion,Wrote me up as a thiefBecause old Rhodes was an advertiser