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    Flotsam And Jetsam
    Flotsam And Jetsam
    Flotsam And Jetsam
    Ebook100 pages56 minutes

    Flotsam And Jetsam

    By Albert Winston Gaines

    ()

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    About this ebook

    This early collection of poetry is both expensive and hard to find in its first edition. It contains poems on the subject of the law and is a fascinating work thoroughly recommended for anyone interested in poetry. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateOct 30, 2012
    ISBN9781447496328
    Flotsam And Jetsam

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      Book preview

      Flotsam And Jetsam - Albert Winston Gaines

      Jetsam

      The Limb of the Law

      The law; it hath honored us, may we honor it.

      — DANIEL WEBSTER.

      OTHEMIS, stern goddess, who presides o’er the law,

      Thy inspiring aid we invoke,

      While we try to portray, in a rhythmical lay,

      The disciples of Blackstone and Coke.

      If now we would sing of a common-place thing,

      As the rose, the brook or the stars;

      Or if we craved light to help us indite

      A Homeric epic to Mars;

      Or if we would tell of the dearest gazelle,

      Or the houri with the eyes of the fawn,

      Or if we would trace on the beautiful face

      Of a maid the blush of the dawn; —

      With a stroke of the pen we would dash it off then,

      Thy aid we ne’er would invoke,

      Nor that thou descend from Olympus to lend

      Inspiration to the poetic stroke;

      But when we would draw the limb of the law,

      And paint him in rhythm and rhyme,

      When we would portray, in a poetic way,

      A theme so grand and sublime,

      Then we would invoke the Olympian folk,

      The muses and gods galore,

      Our pen to inspire with a poetic fire,

      And a fund of mystical lore.

      While in prose we describe the brief-making tribe,

      In language quite pithy and terse,

      We all truly need inspiration indeed,

      To put the attorney in verse.

      The young lawyer dreams — how real it seems —

      And he conscientiously feels,

      That it will not be long ere clients will throng,

      Fairly treading on each other’s heels;

      His future he views in roseate hues,

      In visions of greatness he sees,

      His opponents in court made but the sport

      Of his incontrovertible pleas.

      But when he has waited for a practice belated,

      And the cold world passes him by,

      When his prospects he views thro’ the dumps and the blues,

      And he thinks it all o’er with a sigh, —

      Then he forms the conclusion that the law’s a delusion,

      Of which the youth should beware,

      A siren that sings of the loveliest things,

      But proves a fraud and a snare;

      But just when it seems that all of his dreams

      Of success have proven a lie,

      This votary of Themis — now in extremis —

      Sees a rift in the clouded sky;

      An advancing foot-fall, like an angelic call,

      Strikes plain on his listening ear,

      A litigant astray seems coming his way —

      Ye gods! a client draws near!

      As when drifting afloat from a harbor remote,

      The sport of the wind and the wave,

      A small bark and frail sees a rescuing sail

      Hast’ning most opportunely to save;

      So, with thrilling emotion, in a clientless ocean,

      The young lawyer, (far from the land),

      Is made to rejoice at the sound of a voice,

      And the touch of a client’s hand.

      But we here draw the veil over every detail —

      We are truly in conscience bound

      Not a thing to reveal, as we certainly feel

      We are treading on sacred ground;

      For whom could you find that would be so unkind,

      Yea — who would be so base,

      Or so very rude as to dare to intrude

      On the lawyer’s very first case?

      If there was a flaw in his view of the law, —

      Which was most probably true, —

      Is that any reason why professional treason

      Should expose it to the vulgar view?

      No! no! — the mistakes which the young lawyer makes,

      We will write them all in the sand,

      And the next wave that sweeps from the Lethean deeps

      Will leave not a trace on the strand.

      We do not maintain that it’s always so plain

      That the lawyer’s without any flaw,

      But ’twould be hard to find any one more maligned

      Than this self-same limb of the law.

      For instance, we cite what Coleridge did write:

      When of business there was a great dearth,

      The devil once took a journey to look

      At his rich, fertile farm, the earth;

      That while on his journey, he saw an attorney

      Kill a viper hard by a stable,

      And he smiled this to find, as it put him in mind

      Of Cain and his brother Abel.

      This cannot but be a libel per se,

      As you will plainly perceive,

      When the attorney raised Cain with the viper ’twas plain

      A reminder of Adam and Eve.

      And it shows, in our view, that the Scriptures are true,

      Wherein it is solemnly said,

      Yea, gravely decreed, that the woman’s seed

      Shall bruise the serpent’s head

      And we think that the act is proof of the fact

      That the lawyer is ever the foe

      Of vipers and snakes, of humbugs and fakes,

      And of all that is vulgar

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