goat off to his doom:
On every hand a reverend band,
Prophets and preachers and elders stand
And the oldest rab_bi_, with a tear in his eye,
Delivers a sermon to all standing by.
(We haven't his name--whether Cohen or Harris, he
No doubt was the "poisonest" kind of a Pharisee.)
The sermon was marked by a deal of humility
And pointed the fact, with no end of ability,
That being a Gentile's no mark of gentility,
And, according to Samuel, would certainly d--n you well.
Then, shedding his coat, he approaches the goat
And, while a red fillet he carefully pins on him,
Confesses the whole of the Israelites' sins on him.
With this eloquent burst he exhorts the accurst--
"Go forth in the desert and perish in woe,
The sins of the people are whiter than snow!"
Then signs to his pal for to let the brute go.

The animal, freed from all restraint
Lowered his head, made a kind of a feint,
And charged straight at that elderly saint.
So fierce his attack, and so very severe, it
Quite floored the Rabbi, who, ere he could fly,
Was rammed on the--no, not the back--but just near it.
The scapegoat he snorted, and wildly cavorted,
A light-hearted antelope "out on the ramp",
Then stopped, looked around, got the "lay of the ground",
And made a bee-line back again to the camp.
The elderly priest, as he noticed the beast
So gallantly making his way to the East,
Says he: "From the tents may I never more roam again
If that there old billy-goat ain't going home again.
He's hurrying, too! This never will do.
Can't somebody stop him? I'm all of a stew.
After all our confessions, so openly granted,
He's taking our sins back to where they're not wanted.
We've come all this distance salvation to win agog,
If he takes home our sins--it'll burst up the Synagogue!"

He turned to an Acolyte making his bacca light,
A fleet-footed youth who could run like a crack o' light.
"Run, Abraham, run! Hunt him over the plain,
And drive back the brute to the desert again.
The Sphinx is a-watching, the Pyramids frown on you,
From those granite tops forty cent'ries look down on you--
Run, Abraham, run! I'll bet half-a-crown on you."
So Abraham ran; like a man did he go for him,
But the goat made it clear each time he drew near
That he had what the racing men call "too much toe" for him.

The crowd with great eagerness studied the race--
"Great Scott! isn't