There's a time when the summer is hot,
  When ambition and energy slumber,
When exertion and action are not–
A time that its title has got
  From the placid and peaceful cucumber.

When glory grows weary, and Fame
  Lifts her laurels her hot brow to mop off,
when sport becomes tiresome and tame,
And people of note and of name
  In oblivious dowsiness drop off.

In this period of listless repose
  CONKLING turns to domestic diversions,
OTTENDORFER his eyelids doth close:
E'en the great POPE of Rome in a doze
  Lies untroubled by pilgrim excursions.

And NAST, the small warrior tough
  Drops his rather too-well-pointed crayon:
McVeagh murmurs faintly "enough;"
While BEN no more stumps his McDuff
  In lengthy epistles to "lay on."

TILDEN dreams through the summer days' heat
  Of returning-boards and their decisions.
BEECHER slumbers: perchance 'twere not meet
To conjecture what images sweet
  May be flitting though Henry Ward's visions.

For a while freed from troubles of State
  PRINCE BISMARCK sleeps heedless of treason:
Like cucumbers heaped on a plate
All the lights of the world lie, and wait
  The end of the Midsummer Season.