Stephen's Dream

When a fellow is drunk, he’ll dream queer things,
For the mind cut loose from its leading strings
Goes wandering round as its will may law,
From the southern pole to Labrador;
And oft as it reels like a staggering sot
O’er the dust and rubbish of things forgot,
It will turn of a fact, in its random dashes,
Like a half-pistareen kicked out of the ashes.
One time in the good old days that are gone,
When I used to suck at the stiff blue horn,
And sleep in the ditch with the mud for a bed,
And the patriarch’s pillow* laid under my head,
With a rag of sky, not half ‘tucked up,’
For blanket and coverlet over the top,—
I dreamed a dream, which, if no one will quarrel,
I’ll venture to tell, for the sake of the moral.

Ben Ham was a grogger, and sold new rum
To every sot who was able to come;
If they’d money he’s take it,—if nought but a coat on,
He’d srip it away, to the very last button,
Then turn ‘em out doors without money or clothing,
For drunkards he held as a very great loathing.

It was there, I swallowed my cash one night,
Till head and pockets had grown quite light,
Though the heavier heart sunk down like lead,
As he sent me into the gutter to bed.
I lay and thought on a plan to mend,
But was fast asleep ere I came to the end;
And all at once, it seemed I stood
In a lonely path, and a far off wood.

While musing there on my evil ways,
And the sin and folly of all my days—
And nights to boot—behold there came,
A man, with eyes that shone like flame,
With a fierce rough brown, like a rock whose edge
Had been deep scarred by the stone-man’s sledges;
Black locks, whose ends were crisp and brown,
Hung over his brow’s perpetual frown,
And his fire-seamed cheeks so sharp and thin,
Were tortured into a dismal grin.
Small, rough and keen, like the face of a rasp,
He looked, as he gave my hand a grasp.

“Ha! ha!” said the fellow, “my little chuck Stephen,
I am glad to see you, how are you this even?
My lad, I believe you’re a right true blue,
At least I have heard such stories of you,
For they tell me, wherever I stop to inquire,
You’re ‘smart as a steel-trap’ and ‘keen as a brier;’
Now come, my ducky, let’s just take a clinch
At wrestle, and plague on the one who’ll flinch.”
“No, no,” said I, “you’re alone, a stranger,
And I fear you are putting yourself in danger;
Besides, I reckon that men have enough ill
On earth, without breaking their necks in a scuffle.”
“You daren’t,” said he; “you’re a coward, that’ flat.”
“No, not by a great sight you needn’t talk that.”
“I can throw you,” said he, “no you can’t” I replied.
He louder asserted, but still I denied.
“What is more,” said he, “if you recollect right,
I have thrown you before, and have done it to night.”
“You’ve thrown me!” said I, “what devil are you!”
“At your service,” said he, and his breath burned blue.”
O ye powers, ‘twas Old Nick, as the cloven hoof,
Just seen in the smoking grass, gave proof.
And I marked his horns in the curls of his hair
Standing out from the struggling locks half bare,
And plainly perceived by a thick heavy wake
On the seat of his breeches, the kink of his tail.

Now for life or death,—no room to pause,
For he seized me firm with his vice-like claws
I planted my heel and pressed my lip,
And quick closed in with an answering grip±—
I laid one hand on his shoulder, hard,
Bony, and ridged, and lightning scarred,
Bent over his right, and my left arm plied
Like a tough oak with, to his burning side,
And we bowed, and tugged, and writhed, and wrung,
And harder and harder we hugged and clung;
Till the smoke of his nostrils rose like a mist
And the sweat of my brow on his hot brown hissed!
My heels tore up the green grass sod,
But it blackened and withered wherever he trod;
The struggle was stern, and the struggle was long, 
The fiend grew fierce, and my arm grew strong,
And we wheeled and bent, till by chance a root
Was coiled round the demon’s cloven foot,
When I bore him down with a furious shock
‘Twixt a fallen oak and a jagged rock.
So swift he fell that the sudden stroke
Peeled off the bark from the tough black oak,
And made the moss on the rough rock smoke.
O then the old devil so ready to curse a 
Poor fellow before it, cried stoutly for mercy:
‘Let me up! fair play! ‘twas the root which threw,
Let me up! my fall is no credit to you.”

“No, not till you’ll swear by the heat of your den
That you never will offer to throw me again.”
But the fellow was spunky and gave no pledge,
So I held him snug to the log and lodge;
And he yelled and roared and roared and yelled,
But the louder he shouted the harder I held;
Till, we for the thought, his wits came back,
(For the devil has wit, though his servants may lack),
And as a last hope, to escape from his jam,
He begun to cry out for his old friend Ham.
“Ben Ham! Ben Ham!” did the old rip yell,
“Come quick, or this Steve will make orphans in hell:
I have stood by you through thin and thought thick,
Now just lend a hand to your dear Old Nick.
The voice went forth to the ears of Ben,
And our he rushed from his blood red den;
His grateful bosom all worked to a flutter
As on he sped over field and gutter,
And rock, and wall, and fence, to lend
A helping hand to his ‘good old friend.’
He caught one glimpse of the coming foe
As I bowed to hold the demon low. 
“And now,” thought I, “I had better be off,
For one of these chaps at a time, is enough,
I can stand my hand with a dozen of de’ils,
But, you! good faith, I must take to my heels.”
So I seized the log with all my strength,
And rolled it over the fiend, at length,
And left him writhing beneath its weight,
As I ran from the fear of a far worse fate.
In came poor Ham, in filial wrath,
Roaming and cursing along his path,
And the last I saw, as I glanced o’er the track,
He was rolling the log from the devil’s back.