Tax On Bachelors

(For the Gazette.)

Ten dollars only, only ten
Upon that class of sordid men
Who only live for pelf;
Who adding nothing to the State,
Own nothing but a single plate,
Or hoard their paltry pelf.

Who live in single blessedness,
While Fannie, Mattie, Lizzie, Bess,
Are doomed to live apart
As spinsters; not as “better half,”
And subject to the taunt and laugh
Of every cruel heart!

Shame, on those churlish anchorites,
Whose only playthings, fondlings, pets,
Are coons, and cats; and kittens;
Who have not children, chick or spouse,
No cradle, crib, no cosy house, –
No wife to mend their mittens.

When lotus eating, dreaming, dolts,
Who once could prance and frisk as colts,
When first they touch the heather,
But now, the wild ass in the waste
Flies not in such stupid haste,
When herds are met together.

Ye legislators, grave and gay –
State Senators of Iowa,
Be pound wise, ‘stead of penny;
Lay on their tariff, tax their [stuff],
Till every “jock” shall cry “enough,”
And each shall get his “Jenny.”

Union.

DAVENPORT, Feb. 11, 1862

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Wednesday Morning, February 12, 1862, p. 1