Classic Poem

To bow and scrape and shake your hand,
To greet you with a smile so bland
That you will think no other friend
Can toward you half the good intend;
But still to cherish in one's heart
Enough rank hate to fill a cart —
This is the Isthmian way.

To buy for gold and silver pay;
To answer yea while thinking nay,
To borrow some one's little wealth,
And leave the country for one's health;
To plot and scheme and slyly seek
To make some decent man a sneak —
This is the Isthmian way.

To kiss the man who wins success,
And kick the man whose luck is less;
To make of vice beatitude,
And virtue of ingratitude!
Accept all favors, buTomit
To e'er return the benefit —
This is the Isthmian way.

To curry favor with the great,
And pander to one's meanest trait;
To smash the Decalogue to bits,
But give your neighbor's weakness fits!
Oppress the weak, uphold the strong —
In short, do everything that's wrong —
This is the Isthmian way.

To wage a miasmatic strife,
And suffer all the ills of life;
To eat and drink one's self to death,
And curse God with one's latest breath;
And then a " heavenly mansion " fill
Prepared for one on Monkey Hill —
This is the Isthmian way.

God grant that haply some of us
Escape the general animus,
And travel, though but falteringly,
The nobler path of charity;
Tho' stumbling often, still to find
More cleanly records left behind
Than by the Isthmian way.