"Our ascent to the sun makes our enemy envious."--_Koelnische Zeitung._
The night fell fast, but faster still
A youth came down the darkening hill,
A super-youth, whose super-flag
Flaunted the strange but hackneyed brag,
"Excelsior!"
His eyes betrayed through gold-rimmed prism
Myopia and astigmatism;
But, head in air, he proudly strode,
Declaiming down the fatal road,
"Excelsior!"
The sign-posts clustered left and right
And waved their arms towards the height;
He heeded not, but through the mist
Plunged steeply down and fiercely hissed,
"Excelsior!"
"Put on the brake!" Experience said;
"The stars, my boy, are overhead;
The pit of Tophet's deep and wide."
A sudden snarl of hate replied,
"Excelsior!"
"O stay," cried Sanity, "and cool
Thy fevered head in yonder pool!"
The balefire smouldered in his eye,
And still he muttered, hurtling by,
"Excelsior!"
"Beware the awful precipice!
Beware the bottomless abyss!"
This was Discretion's last Good-night.
He gurgled, as he dropped from sight,
"Excelsior!"
At day-break, when the punctual sun
Explored the hill-tops one by one,
And scoured the solitary steep,
An echo rose from out the deep,
"Excelsior!"
And, from the deeper depths that lay
Beyond the farthest reach of day,
A thin voice wailed, and, mocking it,
Crackled the laughter of the pit,
"Excelsior!"
* * * * *