A Prediction
When the skies are green with clover,
And the cows are flying over;
When the roses lose their fragrance;
When the ants are shiftless vagrants;
When the peacocks pluck their tails,
And the lion pares his nails;
When old ocean’s roaring ridges
Roll beneath iridium bridges;
When diseases and physicians
Quarrel; when the politicians
Go to work; when lawyers never
Fib no more again forever;
When we gather ice to burn,
And to eggs potatoes turn;
When the pie-distended sleeper
On the nightmare keeps his peeper.
Quick to round her up and mount her,
Field and Terry will “encounter.”
When the whales, in battle order,
March across our northern border;
When the serpent of the sea
Is no longer known to be;
When the cats intone in Latin,
And the lady ape wears satin;
When the vulture, Mortgage, perches
Nevermore upon the churches;
When the sycophant despises
Arts by which the bird-louse rises
Comfortably to the sky,
And the smithy-haunting fly,
Sitting on the swelling bellows,
Is no prouder than his fellows;
When the mocking-bird eschews
All of his assenting views.
Nor proclaims them out of season;
When the poets learn to reason;
When lieutenants damn the bullets
Penetrating captains’ gullets,
And a major feels the pain
Of his colonel’s shattered brain;
When the best of human creatures
Is the most austere of preachers,
And the woman who’s demurest
Is the truest and the purest;
When the Mississippi, yearning
For its native hills and turning
Deftly backward in its bed,
Lays its mouth against its head;
When the turtle-doves are cruel—
Field and Terry’ll fight a duel.