Te Deums: Hyas soclee tyee

Found in The Atlin [BC] Claim, Saturday, April 21, 1900, page 4, column 3.

A classic 19th-century newspaper doggerel poem, which assumes the reader understands ‘Chinook’, titled Te Deums:

TE DEUMS.

“The Prince of Orange, William
Must have been a Boer villain.” 
—KIPLING of PINE. –

All hail! all hall! to’the great Kipling of Pine!
O, lordly quill-driver, what glory is thine!
O, most consummate master of prose and of
verse!
The king of scribes and marvel of the uni-
verse!

With thine amorous pen thou hast the muses
seduced;
The whole literary tribe to subjection reduced.
To thy feet the whole world has fallen at
once;
Compared to thee Shakespeare was only a
dunce.

Hadst thou been born before Byron saw the
light,
His name would not have filled the world
with delight;
He would have been called the great Kipling
of Pine,
A name more famous on which to recline.

A literary god, poetic wonder of the age!
A behemoth of the pen, who’ll soon be all
the rage:
We incline in thy presence, where thunder
seems to roll,
Like Indians bowing down before a totem
pole.

Unsurpassed by any to launch Apollo’s
shaft,
Hyas soclee tyee* of the literary craft:
Had immortal Shakespeare seen thy latest
poem,
He’d have tucked his tail and hastened off to
home.

O, for the braying voice of the long-eared
ass!
O for the mighty Gabriel’s horn of the
sounding brass!
To trumpet thy praise, 0 great Kipling
divine:
To follow thee where pitch is used in place of
the Pine.

—POET LAUREATE.
Pine City, B. C. ,** April 15.

*great high chief (great god)

**a.k.a. Discovery City