Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MADAME LA GRIPPE, by JAMES RYDER RANDALL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MADAME LA GRIPPE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Where the seas meet the land, and the land quits the seas
Last Line: So providence shield us from madame la grippe!
Subject(s): Cities; Sickness; United States; Urban Life; Illness; America


WHERE the seas meet the land, and the land quits the seas,
The universe shakes with a terrible sneeze:
The Czar in his palace, the serf in his hut,
Explode all alike when the nostril is shut;
The saint's holy person is no more exempt
Than the sinner whom Satan refuses to tempt.
The pest of the air takes a world-waking trip,
And its banners are blazoned: "Beware of La Grippe."

We heard of it first where Peter the Great
Made the marsh of the Neva the heart of his State.
It crumpled the Cossack, and then, in the morn,
Crossing the Balkans, captured the fair Golden Horn.
The Sultan dropped down with a bigness of head
That made his whole harem afraid of the dead,
For a microbic Skobeleff rushed with a skip
And held old Byzantium fast in La Grippe.

The Berlin professors went down in despair
And their scholars tore Greek, by the roots, from their hair;
The Titans who humbled the nations grew weak,
While their battle-cry sank to a sad nasal squeak.
The junker dejectedly sipped at his beer,
Then turned from the stein in a transport of fear;
The White Lady scare and the pale Phantom Ship
Were nothing in horror to Madame La Grippe!

Zigzagging along on the Baltic's bleak strand,
It crossed the grim channel to sturdy England:
The eloquent Gladstone lost power of speech,
And Salisbury took to his bed with a screech;
The Queen drank hot toddy of fine Irish make,
And dreamed that Parnell was attending her wake
With a dark, scowling visage and sinister lip,
Disguised in the raiment of Madame La Grippe!

Astride of the cable, by British emprise,
It shot to the land of the free and the wise:
The Bostonese stomach disdained pork and beans,
And lived on a diet of antipyrines;
New York heard the figure of Liberty whoop
Like a child in the closest embrace of the croup;
The scissors were dropped from Coupon's keen clip
As Wall Street went mad in the waltz of La Grippe!

On the wings of a blizzard, it flew to the West,
With a wild and a woolly rheumatic behest:
Chicago surrendered at once the World's Fair
And took a first prize in the Prince of the Air;
The big bulk of Barnes was a rampart of might,
But it sank at the shock of this malefic sprite.
East and West, West and East, with a roar and a rip,
Crashed the thunderous footfall of Madame La Grippe!

The moral, perchance, is not proper to hide,
It levels at once our poor human pride:
We are all in the clutch of invisible foes,
And the elements fill us with blessings and woes;
We have brotherhood bonds to pay at our ease,
In all the vast circle of health and disease;
But little it matters, whatever may slip,
So Providence shield us from Madame La Grippe!





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