Robert W. Service

The Junior God

  • The Junior God looked from his place
  • In the conning towers of heaven,
  • And he saw the world through the span of space
  • Like a giant golf-ball driven.
  • And because he was bored, as some gods are,
  • With high celestial mirth,
  • He clutched the reins of a shooting star,
  • And he steered it down to earth.
  •  
  • The Junior God, 'mid leaf and bud,
  • Passed on with a weary air,
  • Till lo! he came to a pool of mud,
  • And some hogs were rolling there.
  • Then in he plunged with gleeful cries,
  • And down he lay supine;
  • For they had no mud in paradise,
  • And they likewise had no swine.
  •  
  • The Junior God forgot himself;
  • He squelched mud through his toes;
  • With the careless joy of a wanton boy
  • His reckless laughter rose.
  • Till, tired at last, in a brook close by,
  • He washed off every stain;
  • Then softly up to the radiant sky
  • He rose, a god again.
  •  
  • The Junior God now heads the roll
  • In the list of heaven's peers;
  • He sits in the House of High Control,
  • And he regulates the spheres.
  • Yet does he wonder, do you suppose,
  • If, even in gods divine,
  • The best and wisest may not be those
  • Who have wallowed awhile with the swine?

The Argument

  • Said Jock McBrown to Tam McSmith,
  • "A little bet I'm game to take on,
  • That I can scotch this Shakespeare myth
  • And prove Will just a stoodge for Bacon."
  •  
  • Said Tam McSmith to Jock McBrown,
  • "Ye gyke, I canna let ye rave on.
  • See here, I put a shilling down:
  • My betting's on the Bard of Avon."
  •  
  • Said Jock McBrown to Tam McSmith,
  • "Come on, ye'll pay a braw wee dramlet;
  • Bacon's my bet — the proof herewith...
  • He called his greatest hero — HAMlet."