With Brutus in St. Jo
Of all the opry-houses then obtaining in the West The one which Milton Tootle owned was, by all odds, the best; Milt, being rich, was much too proud to run the thing alone, So he hired an "acting manager," a gruff old man named Krone— A stern, commanding man with piercing eyes and flowing beard, And his voice assumed a thunderous tone when Jack and I appeared; He said that Julius Caesar had been billed a week or so, And would have to have some armies by the time he reached St. Jo! O happy days, when Tragedy still winged an upward flight, When actors wore tin helmets and cambric robes at night! O happy days, when sounded in the public's rapturous ears The creak of pasteboard armor and the clash of wooden spears! O happy times for Jack and me and that one other supe That then and there did constitute the noblest Roman's troop! With togas, battle axes, shields, we made a dazzling show, When we were Roman soldiers with Brutus in St. Jo! We wheeled and filed and double-quicked wherever Brutus led, The folks applauding what we did as much as what he said; 'T was work, indeed; yet Jack and I were willing to allow 'T was easier following Brutus than following father's plough; And at each burst of cheering, our valor would increase— We tramped a thousand miles that night, at fifty cents apiece! For love of Art—not lust for gold—consumed us years ago, When we were Roman soldiers with Brutus in St. Jo! To-day, while walking in the Square, Jack Langrish says to me: "My friend, the drama nowadays ain't what it used to be! These farces and these comedies—how feebly they compare With that mantle of the tragic art which Forrest used to wear! My soul is warped with bitterness to think that you and I— Co-heirs to immortality in seasons long gone by— Now draw a paltry stipend from a Boston comic show, We, who were Roman soldiers with Brutus in St. Jo!" And so we talked and so we mused upon the whims of Fate That had degraded Tragedy from its old, supreme estate; And duly, at the Morton bar, we stigmatized the age As sinfully subversive of the interests of the Stage! For Jack and I were actors in the halcyon, palmy days Long, long before the Hoyt school of farce became the craze; Yet, as I now recall it, it was twenty years ago That we were Roman soldiers with Brutus in St. Jo! We were by birth descended from a race of farmer kings Who had done eternal battle with grasshoppers and things; But the Kansas farms grew tedious—we pined for that delight We read of in the Clipper in the barber's shop by night! We would be actors—Jack and I—and so we stole away From our native spot, Wathena, one dull September day, And started for Missouri—ah, little did we know We were going to train as soldiers with Brutus in St. Jo! Our army numbered three in all—Marc Antony's was four; Our army hankered after fame, but Marc's was after gore! And when we reached Philippi, at the outset we were met With an inartistic gusto I can never quite forget. For Antony's overwhelming force of thumpers seemed to be Resolved to do "them Kansas jays"—and that meant Jack and me! My lips were sealed but that it seems quite proper you should know That Rome was nowhere in it at Philippi in St. Jo! I've known the slow-consuming grief and ostentatious pain Accruing from McKean Buchanan's melancholy Dane; Away out West I've witnessed Bandmann's peerless hardihood, With Arthur Cambridge have I wrought where walking was not good; In every phase of horror have I bravely borne my part, And even on my uppers have I proudly stood for Art! And, after all my suffering, it were not hard to show That I got my allopathic dose with Brutus at St. Jo! That army fell upon me in a most bewildering rage And scattered me and mine upon that histrionic stage; My toga rent, my helmet gone and smashed to smithereens, They picked me up and hove me through whole centuries of scenes! I sailed through Christian eras and mediæval gloom And fell from Arden forest into Juliet's painted tomb! Oh, yes, I travelled far and fast that night, and I can show The scars of honest wounds I got with Brutus in St. Jo! Ah me, old Davenport is gone, of fickle fame forgot, And Barrett sleeps forever in a much neglected spot; Fred Warde, the papers tell me, in far woolly western lands Still flaunts the banner of high Tragic Art at one-night stands; And Jack and I, in Charley Hoyt's Bostonian dramas wreak Our vengeance on creation at some eensty dolls per week. By which you see that public taste has fallen mighty low Since we fought as Roman soldiers with Brutus in St. Jo!
Eugene Field’s other poems:
