&«;'?.i-.i

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

n>'**W'**

1^

3 9002 07094 8519

YALEUNlVERSnY LIBRARY

Yale Univers .

'-'i

RESIDENT ILEyELflHD

or'aTY'

IGHT E
COMMERCIAL REEDOM

^Alfi

^^'Q'j'Z.^, 6 IS

iSgx

PRESIDENT CLEVELAND

vVGHr

OF

(^OMMERCIAL pREEDOM

BY

THOMAS W. MIZNER, A. M.

189?.

\t^

Traue Mark.

Entered according to Act of Congress In the Library of Washington, D. C.
By Thomas W. Mizner, of Detroit, Mich., 1893.

MRS. CLEVELAND.

(^I^IArs. Groyer Cleveland  ^

TT^ERMIT the author to dedicate to the first lady of the land, the Light of Com-
J_p MERCIAL Freedom, as illuminated by that harbinger of personal liberty, the
invincible American Tribune in the White House, who will lead the countless
hosts of white slaves from the fathomless abyss of financial despotism to the mount
ain heights of industrial independence. If the lyric muse awakens a responsive
chord in your noble consort's great, patriotic heart to direct the redeemed State
Ship, as she glides on the waves of popular applause, scattering the blessings of
wealth and happiness to all alike, forever free, then may she ride at anchor in the
haven of universal prosperity, in the plentitude of the people's power and the plaudits
of freemen in the paradise of patriotism.
Within the curtained cloister of the patriot's altar, there ascends from the rhap-
sodist's soul, the holiest incense of impassioned prayer, invoking the celestial muse
to move the world, unseen of the world, with the electric currents of patriotism on
waves of thought to every shore girdling the globe with its heaven-born influence,
to be welcomed by all nations in all climes, and hailed by angels with thrills of joy.
In the star-capped tower of the poet's imagination the celestial muses ring the
golden bells of Liberty, whose cloud-born clarion chimes reverberate on waves of joy
from the loftiest mountain peaks to the nethermost glens, from verdant vales to

heathery hillsides, where pinching poverty pines in penance, lightening every heart
with flashing flames of a brighter hope, a surer, firmer trust in the emancipation of
tax-chained labor, and the dawn of personal freedom, in the pursuit of man's immor
tal destiny and eternal happiness.
It is the inspired function and bounden duty of the satirist to riddle the mask
covering the shams and ignorant pretensions of an illiterate, unprincipled, prison-
doomed, plutonion-boundplutocracy. The foundation walls of our glorious republic are
composed of incorruptible virtue, and the grand superstructure is a mosaic of noble
patriotic deeds and vicarious sacrifices. Her real wealth is not in costly castles and
radiant robes, but rather the shining scholarship of her savans, the zeal of her pat
riots and the unclouded morality and pure devotion of her free people. Under pro
pitious stars the republic may realize the brightest ideal of our golden dreams.
Thrice blessed, felicitous majesty of the heavenly-reigning angel-soul of the
White House, with the self-sustaining mightiness of conscience and the spiritual
power of the prophetess, guide the republic of worsbii^ping souls, rich in the jewels
of celestial graces adorning spo.tless, immortal spirits, on pea^-ly pinions winging
them to Heaven's gates.
I have the honor to subscribe myself very dutifully, the humble author,
TtiO/nAS W. /niZNER.
October 20, 1893.

1^

^^RESIDENT MjLEVELAND
LIGHT ^^ OF ^ COMMERCIAL )i^ FREEDOM.

When scepter'd Liberty lighten'd lustrous Lake Erie,
She lur'd a genius with a diadem of victory.
His image mirrored in the sheen of the moonlit isle,
1 ransformed in the man of destiny free from guile.
Indomitable soul, restless, pure, divine,
Gviided a brain with purpose noble and sublime.
The gold-proof patriot typified his grand career,
Divinitive seer, his spirit spurned all fear.

The thoroughbred warrior for justice and right;
A fearless advocate for truth against might;
For the plebian right versus the patrician wrong:
Lone, brave, irresistible, 'gainst the illegal throng.
Ever 'gainst crooked taxation with its crucial ills.
In hamlet, state, nation, or nefarious McKinley bills.
Life-long champion of constitutional Liberty,
He battled long against a monied oligarchy.

Ill
The invincible harbinger of Democratic faith,
Caused the fatal flood that stranded "Bennie" in a strait.
President inter pares, transcendent matchless seer,
Insures the glittering prize to those in patriot's spheres.
For pure government, the standard-bearer in the van.
His rare genius held in trust at his country's command.
Grand almoner of official place and lofty station.
Directs inspired moves on the chess-board of the nation.

IV
Knows by intuition all just and lawful precedents,
Makes Judges, Ministers, Ambassadors, and Ex-Presidents
Gifted Cleveland's prescience of the mutation of things
Foresees the insidious snares of political rings.
The peerless seer has so filled the president's chair
As to be vested with this title to Washington's heir.
Despite the witchery wales of political leaven,
Grover C. anchors in the White House in Ninety-Seven.

V
Hear the cloud-cap'd welkin ring with the wierd wailings for the dead
Escaping from the wrecks of stricken-low high-tariff Homestead!
The money-martyrs shed their blood in lifeless libations,
To appease merciless Mammon in wild incantations,
'Mid the griefful groans of the sacrificed sons of toil.
Bound by the starving spoliator of Carnegie's foil.
Bled and devoured by that arch-fiend of evil omen,
'I'he bloody demon, the death-fraught vampire of Protecdon!

VI
See piteous plebians, tramping troublous tearful throngs.
Eyes bleared with pains welling up from oppression's thongs !
In the first car, the weeping Goddess of Commercial Freedom,
Shrouded in the blackest robes befitting the yawning tomb.
With frenzied face, tear-veiled eyes, looking to Heaven,
Praying God to stay the wrecks of the High-Tariff leaven,
To sever the shackles from the limbs of the starved sla%'es,
Tax-chained, robbed and gibbeted by Protection's knaves!

VII
In the second car the Heaven-born Revolution stands.
Incarnation of Patriotism, the gold-proof Cleveland,
In Justice's panoply, golden shield of eternal Right,
The breastplate of Faith, dazzling helmet of celestial Light,
With Freedom's starry baldric girt, a sword whose bristling steel
Is pointed by souls goaded by Tyranny's iron heel,
Bearing high aloft the twinkling stars of the people's reign.
Thunderbolt Tribune, electrifying with heroic aims!

VIII
Fired by dauntless courage, divinitive will to dare,
Borne by immortal Hope, the patriot's burning prayer,
The avenging Nemesis will lead the millitant hosts.
The countless throng of tax-chained plebians, and storm
The death-fraught barons within their sin-dyed silver-brick moats
Intrenched in robber-castles and the stolen spoils borne
By Godless knaves, into black and merited perdition,
Goaded by the wild furies' thongs to swift retribution ! !

IX
The serried shots of avenging slaves blight their attainted souls,
Demons' flights wing wrath's victims to remorse's shoreless goal!
Peerless seer, throned in the zenith of the people's reign,
Will be spirited from his shrine at Bartholdi's typic fane.
Margined by waters refulgent with his deathless fame,
Whose radiant face mirrors the sheen of his spotless name.
Borne by blithesome freemen, 'mid the echoes of joy's alarms.
With gladsome hearts and winsome glees, in patriot's arms.

X
Along a roseate roadway strewn with new-blown flowers.
To the Nation's White House, where with eagle-eyed powers,
He will ever guard with sleepless vigilance the sacred claims
Of the poorest tax-payer thralled in Tyranny's chains !
The public verdict is read in burning letters of fire.
Woe to the vile recreants meriting the people's ire.
The bribed Senate that spawned the thief's McKinley tax,
Is beheaded by the enraged people's battle axe.

XI
The meet retributive power of the Almightj^'s wrath
Will paralyze perjured traitors in a brimstone bath!
The merciless McKinley robber-hatching company.
Limited in nothing, but justice and honesty,
Incubates millionaires with wonderful celerity.
Makes robbers of partizans with graceless impunity!
The McKinley incubator hatches birds of hydra hues.
The Supreme Fraud turns on his gas to suit his vicious ^'iews.
XII
Protection's nest hatches millionaire birds in fine feathers.
Protection's prison cast out the poor fowl for all weathers.
The peacock millionaires are arrayed in diamond dies.
The pauper chicks are eaten alive by High-Tariff flies.
The bad baron's Supreme Sitting is ever ill at ease.
Unless the incubator waves the bloody shirt to the breeze.
The Upas of Bribery spreads to the horizon's verge.
Blasts the Fane of Justice, grave-digger at Libertv's dirge.

XIII
Briarian bribe-mongers, rich by vile indirection,
Partisan plunderers wear the scorn of the nation !
It is the Octopus, insatiate fiend of wicked times.
Off with its head, source of endless un whispered crimes !
Hungry hirelings, sold to the best bidder on aucdon blocks.
Perjured knaves bought and sheared, unwashed sheep in flocks!
The bribers' slaves, with their master's dog-collar round them girt.
Are tied to their kennels of vice, scorned by the meanest serf!

XIV
The Nation's Forum, haunted by the sad shades of Liberty,
Conjures up its stars to rid it of its base iniquity.
The winged plague of Bribery strikes the Senate's walls.
The charnel house of partisans blackens the nation's halls :
Dead to the qualms of conscience, dead to pangs of burning shame.
Blasted by the siren charming with corrupting gains.
Blind to Patriotism's gleams glowing with a quenchless flame,
Shrouded with the pall of an eternally infamous name!!

XV
Weird phantoms of its past glory flit through the charnel space.
Its viewless spirits weep for the crimes of this haunted place !
The sins of corruption are chanted by black demon's choir,
Unlaureled headless bribers fuel for a nation's pyre !
The Senate's morgue echoes the crimes of the robber's den.
The bribers' ashes are strewn to the four winds of heaven!!
Outraged oppression will thunder its avenging ire
And singe the frozen tongues of bribers with its quenchless fire ! !

XVI
Unjust taxation is the torch whose flame burns a nation,
Tyrants are meet oblations for the State's expiation.
The McKinley bill is the fire brand of the Nation's blaze,
That will burn to ashes the strongholds of the barons' craze!
Bribery, with the scepter of party fanaticism.
Divorces Right from the people in the tariff idolism.
Mammon steals the libations of the sacrificial throng.
The poor perish to pacify a monumental wrong.

XVII
Protection's glamour refracts the rays to the starveling's ej'es.
His vision gloats on hunger, manna from the tariff skies!!
Liberty's I'obes were stolen to paj' the High Tariff tax.
To stifle her outcries her head lost bv Protecrion's Axe!!

The money-makers are crazed by lucre's luring strife.
The pinioned poor hunger rather for the bread of Life.
Baron's birds of prey hide their eyries in the casde's tower,
Above the reach or range of their helpless victim's power!

XVIII
From robber's roost these harpies sweep down in the dead of night,
Pillage piteous people with pitiless power's gripe ! !
These foul birds of evil omen perch on the beggar's door.
Croaking to leprous Lazarus, "Tax," "Tax," "Tax," a truceless war!!
Their tutelage ties the food Hope wafted to the pauper's floor.
The public conscience murmurs into the cannon's rueful roar!!
The spirit of sworded Freedom will foil the tyrant's crimes,
Softening the clarion clangor of poverty's chilling chimes !

XIX
The exile of tyrants preludes the knell of povert}-.
The charmed lives of tax-slaves languish into liberty.
Belated balloting in Belial's bribery broil,
Is paid for by the brawn and bone of the tax-payer's toil !
Let the hungry howling hirelings forswear the guilty gold.
Destroy the mischief machine wherein votes are bought and sold ! !
Elect senators from the people's popular acclaim,
The Australian ballot will send patriots without stain.

XX
The cultured, honest, patriodc poor, like good Gov. Blair,
As vainly seek the nation's Senate as fly in mid-air.
The fiat of the money-bags sways with a wicked rod.
Makes senators of jumping jacks jerked by Mammon's nod;
Misrepresents the people, reflects only empty self,
Lost to Patriotism by the craze of pillaged pelf!
False to truth, defiled by evil's poisoned challice,
Bribearchs commit the unpardonable sin 'gainst Justice !

XXI
Piteous pauper pilfers pennies pines in a prison pen.
The fiend who bribes meanest men should hang in a felon's den !
SouUess Senator Ape, with glutton's maw and comic tail,
Outbribes his poor rival with pine logs or Bessemer rails;
His aspirations aspersed with a stock-jobbing past.
The antics of the saw-dust freak make idiots stand aghast!
Should the Senate be blackened with a puffing smoke-stack,
Propped up with the purchased guj^s of a bribed pack?

XXII
Should the shrines to Clay and Webster within the Senate's bars
Be desecrated by derailed, bribe-smashed freight-cars ?
Should the Fane of Liberty, where Tyranny ever quails.
Be stuffed with basswood shingles and rusty rotten rails?
Gobbling, guzzling, garish gluttons, with more lucre than brains.
Disgrace those sacred trusts purchased with polluted gains!
The chairs of wonderful Webster and the immortal Cla}^
Echo with the chatterings of the aping monkey's bray ! !

XXIII
Read the doom of the blasted bribers branded on the wall.
With the thorns of the people's scorn lashed from Justice's hall.
Hooted with the public wrath, shrouded with the blackest tar,
Feathered in robes of shame, ridden on rails near and far,
Buffeting Stygian waves on the Plutonian shore,
From the righteous eyes of Pleaven banished evermore !
The Senate is a dear machine against the people's aims
Run by vile cyclops with one eye for their own grabbing gains !

XXIV
The electoral college, fearful fraud, is freemen's blight.
Elects the smaller vote against the people's rights.
Let pure citizens vote direct for the people's free choice.
Unheeding the seducing siren of the briber's voice.
The world's wealth and weal intrusted by the King of Heaven,
For His glor}' and the happiness alike of all men.
The dark clouds of woe in the chaos of the McKinley doom,
Aanish in the ravs of the sun of Commercial Freedom!

XXV
These priceless prizes, awards to the people forever free,
Cleveland's name echoed in freemen's songs of victory!
Thou Conquering Chief, purge the senate's crooks, rotten to the core.
Blighted by the stains of corruption, pure in days of yore.
With burning words now light with quenchless patriotic fire.
The darkened Forum with celestial wisdom to inspire!
To capture an apostate Senate thy trophy shall it be,
And laureate thee, with the Crown of Immortality!!

XXVI
The vestal fires on the patriot's altar ever burn.
Thy heroism blazoned on the doric marble urn.
Image of Patriotism, throned in every clime,
Shield of the helpless, benisoned at poverty's shrine.
When Liberty's riven roots revive her first laurel stem.
She will twine thy typic temples with an eternal diadem !
Blazon our ideal with the rythmic chimes of deathless fame,
Sing sacred peans to magnify a refulgent name !

XXVII
Golden praise of endless ages, thj^ deeds a priceless boon,
Throned in the hearts of the people, idolized Tribune!
Free speech, free men, free exchange of the world's gains,
Which the Creator made for all alike within His vast domains
Every heart lightened with cheering Joy's flashing flame.
Every living creature happy in Grover's blest domain,
Every child of Freedom owner of ten thousand dimes.
Every cottage clangs its bells cast in sweet carol-chimes.

XXVIII
'The Cleveland State-Ship plows the wide wide world's smiling sea.
With the rifting prow of limitless trade, forever free!
Commercial Freedom, silver lining of her unerring keel,
The patriotic policy insuring the public weal.
Competitive charges, the spikes of her hurricane deck.
Shielding her crew from the pitiless waves of High-Tariff wrecks!
Vicarious Patriotism, Eegis of her exposed gunwale.
Making the furious forces of her foes forever fail!

XXIX
Truth hath hewn out of hickory her Heaven pointing masts,
Forever checking the strains of Error's withering blasts.
The loom of Justice hath woven her spodess bribe-proof sails,
Unrufl^ed mid gilded crimes winds and waves strewing the gale.
Honor knotted the rigging of her nervy wiUing ropes
To the sails speeding the argosy of her golden hopes.
Her search-lights flash upon the stains of covert bribery,
Her fog-alarm sounds the warning to corrupt monopoly.

XXX
The compass indicates the shoal of riches to the few.
The tiller holds the course of equity to all the crew.
Her pumps pull up sinecures of the basest perfidy,
Casting out the vile leeches' food for sharks of the angry sea.
The robber's trusts are blown to atoms with bombs rob'd with flames
Her shattering shells scatter "Bennie's" bogus pension claims!!
" People's Plain Government," bright signal on her pennon fair,
'¦ Public office a Holy Trust," her cloud rifting prayer!
XXXI
Her bounding bows with exultant joy breast the spray's silver veil.
Heavenly Peace is throned 'mid her bonnie snowy sails.
Eternal Right cast her anchor in happy freemen's land,
'Gainst the wiles of insidious tja-ants to ever stand ! !
Her main deck is canopied with swords for freemen forever free.
Her masts radiate the irridesc^nt lights of Liberty ! !
Her peans, with holy censers, rise in incense gleaming fanes.
One Father, one faith, one flag, one fame her prayers attain.

XXXII
In Heaven's choirs, saints, in orbs transcending lucre's craze.
Where cherubim and seraphim hymn their empyrean praise.
Behold with joy the State-Ship in Liberty's rays glary gay.
Heaven's beatific host bless her sway in Freedom's fray!
The High-Tariff craft glides into the wild waves of miser}'.
The nympholeptic corsair, scourge of the dead commercial sea !
The Ship of State runs her down on McKinley's tin-plate shore.
Whose blood-drunk barnacles desert the wreck with passions roar!

XXXIII
Her slaves winged with Protection fly into the surge's boom.
Seeking the Lethe to efface the dream of her party's doom !
Their hopes writhing in the urn of Fraud's pitiless surge.
The strains of the High-Tariff Octopus their ceaseless dirge !
The black sea-mews, feathered with Protection's shadowy wiles,
Raven her ship-wrecked household gods with frontless guile !
Bribery scuttled the hull of the "G"odless "0"ld «P"irates' craft
Corruption corroded her dismantled quivering masts!

XXXIV
Her rudder rent by unjust taxation's howling gale,
The AU-seeing's vengeful winds hath strewn her riven sails!
The State-Ship, in Freedom's robes, sways from Bering waters free.
To the radiant island gems of the sunny equatorial sea.
Her gleeful sails cheer each spray of hope with Free Trade's ensign.
Her propitious stars shine on waves of joy in every clime.
At the helm, splendors of Patriotism crown Grover C,
Heliac Day-Star in the galaxy of Commercial Liberty.

From this epic has been quoted the lyric, entitled " Grover C,"
set to music by Wm. C. G. Wright, composer of Lambda Sigma Waltzes,
Fourth Regiment Band March, Valse de Concert,, Spanish Dances i and
2, dedicated to and played for Princess Eulalie, of Spain, etc , etc,
1 Other lyrics from this poem are being arranged ¦with music, as
the "Monkey' Senator," the "Baron's Craze," the "Cleveland State
Ship," etc.

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

3 9002 02946 6282

vsxai

^^

^^^ml

^p

^^^^

p

^^

K

^B

m

wig

i

Ip

^

^P^v^

9

fe^-

¦S.-3

^^p^i'

o-Tv wW f»H^ (n *•.. ,,,