The Man Who Could Write

  Shun--shun the Bowl! That fatal, facile drink
    Has ruined many geese who dipped their quills in 't;
  Bribe, murder, marry, but steer clear of Ink
    Save when you write receipts for paid-up bills in 't.

  There may be silver in the “blue-black”--all
  I know of is the iron and the gall.

  Boanerges Blitzen, servant of the Queen,
  Is a dismal failure--is a Might-have-been.
  In a luckless moment he discovered men
  Rise to high position through a ready pen.
  Boanerges Blitzen argued therefore--“I,
  With the selfsame weapon, can attain as high.”
   Only he did not possess when he made the trial,
  Wicked wit of C-lv-n, irony of L--l.

  [Men who spar with Government need, to back their blows,
  Something more than ordinary journalistic prose.]

  Never young Civilian's prospects were so bright,
  Till an Indian paper found that he could write:
  Never young Civilian's prospects were so dark,
  When the wretched Blitzen wrote to make his mark.
  Certainly he scored it, bold, and black, and firm,
  In that Indian paper--made his seniors squirm,
  Quoted office scandals, wrote the tactless truth--
  Was there ever known a more misguided youth?
  When the Rag he wrote for praised his plucky game,
  Boanerges Blitzen felt that this was Fame;
  When the men he wrote of shook their heads and swore,
  Boanerges Blitzen only wrote the more:

  Posed as Young Ithuriel, resolute and grim,
  Till he found promotion didn't come to him;
  Till he found that reprimands weekly were his lot,
  And his many Districts curiously hot.

  Till he found his furlough strangely hard to win,
  Boanerges Blitzen didn't care to pin:
  Then it seemed to dawn on him something wasn't right--
  Boanerges Blitzen put it down to “spite”;

  Languished in a District desolate and dry;
  Watched the Local Government yearly pass him by;
  Wondered where the hitch was; called it most unfair.
  *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

  That was seven years ago--and he still is there!