Judex Judicatus

Judge Armstrong, when the poor have sought your aid, To be released from vows that they have made In haste, and leisurely repented, you, As stern as Rhadamanthus (Minos too, And AEeacus) have drawn your fierce brows down And petrified them with a moral frown! With iron-faced rigor you have made them run The gauntlet of publicity-each Hun Or Vandal of the public press allowed To throw their households open to the crowd And bawl their secret bickerings aloud. When Wealth before you suppliant appears, Bang! go the doors and open fly your ears! The blinds are drawn, the lights diminished burn, Lest eyes too curious should look and learn That gold refines not, sweetens not a life Of conjugal brutality and strife- That vice is vulgar, though it gilded shine Upon the curve of a judicial spine. The veiled complainant's whispered evidence, The plain collusion and the no defense, The sealed exhibits and the secret plea, The unrecorded and unseen decree, The midnight signature and-_chink! chink! chink! Nay, pardon, upright Judge, I did but think I heard that sound abhorred of honest men; No doubt it was the scratching of your pen. O California! long-enduring land, Where Judges fawn upon the Golden Hand, Proud of such service to that rascal thing As slaves would blush to render to a king Judges, of judgment destitute and heart, Of conscience conscious only by the smart From the recoil (so insight is enlarged) Of duty accidentally discharged; Invoking still a 'song o' sixpence' from The Scottish fiddle of each lusty palm, Thy Judges, California, skilled to play This silent music, through the livelong-day Perform obsequious before the rich, And still the more they scratch the more they itch!