A Nonsense Anthology
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Title: A Nonsense Anthology
Compiler: Carolyn Wells
Release date: November 1, 2005 [eBook #9380]
Most recently updated: January 2, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A NONSENSE ANTHOLOGY ***
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Robert Prince and PG Distributed Proofreaders
_He must be a fool indeed who cannot at
times play the fool; and he who does not
enjoy nonsense must be lacking in sense_.
_WILLIAM J. ROLFE_.
A Nonsense Anthology
Collected by Carolyn Wells
1910
TO
GELETT BURGESS
A NONSENSE LOVER
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
JABBERWOCKY Lewis Carroll
MORS IABROCHII Anonymous
THE NYUM-NYUM Anonymous
UFFIA Harriet R. White
SPIRK TROLL-DERISIVE James Whitcomb Riley
THE WHANGO TREE 1840
SING FOR THE GARISH EYE W.S. Gilbert
THE CRUISE OF THE "P.C." Anonymous
TO MARIE Anonymous
LUNAR STANZAS Henry Coggswell Knight
NONSENSE Anonymous, 1617
SONNET FOUND IN A DESERTED MAD HOUSE Anonymous
THE OCEAN WANDERER Anonymous
SHE'S ALL MY FANCY PAINTED HIM Lewis Carroll
MY RECOLLECTEST THOUGHTS Charles E. Carryl
FATHER WILLIAM Anonymous
IN THE GLOAMING James C. Bayles
BALLAD OF BEDLAM Punch
'TIS SWEET TO ROAM Anonymous
HYMN TO THE SUNRISE Anonymous
THE MOON IS UP Anonymous
'T IS MIDNIGHT Anonymous
UPRISING SEE THE FITFUL LARK Anonymous
LIKE TO THE THUNDERING TONE Bishop Corbet
MY DREAM Anonymous
MY HOME Anonymous
IN IMMEMORIAM Cuthbert Bede
THE HIGHER PANTHEISM IN A NUTSHELL A. C. Swinburne
DARWINITY Herman Merivale
SONG OF THE SCREW Anonymous
MOORLANDS OF THE NOT Anonymous
METAPHYSICS Oliver Herford
ABSTROSOPHY Gelett Burgess
ABSTEMIA Gelett Burgess
PSYCHOLOPHON Gelett Burgess
TIMON OF ARCHIMEDES Charles Battell Loomis
ALONE Anonymous
LINES BY A MEDIUM Anonymous
TRANSCENDENTALISM From the Times of India
INDIFFERENCE Anonymous
QUATRAIN Anonymous
COSSIMBAZAR Henry S. Leigh
THE PERSONIFIED SENTIMENTAL Bret Harte
A CLASSIC ODE Charles Battell Loomis
WHERE AVALANCHES WAIL Anonymous
BLUE MOONSHINE Francis G. Stokes
NONSENSE Thomas Moore
SUPERIOR NONSENSE VERSES Anonymous
WHEN MOONLIKE ORE THE HAZURE SEAS W.M. Thackeray
LINES BY A PERSON OF QUALITY Alexander Pope
FRANGIPANNI Anonymous
LINES BY A FOND LOVER Anonymous
FORCING A WAY Anonymous
THY HEART Anonymous
A LOVE-SONG BY A LUNATIC Anonymous
THE PARTERRE E.H. Palmer
TO MOLLIDUSTA Planché
JOHN JONES A.C. Swinburne
THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT Edward Lear
A BALLADE OF THE NURSERIE John Twig
A BALLAD OF HIGH ENDEAVOR Anonymous
THE LUGUBRIOUS WHINGWHANG James Whitcomb Riley
OH! WEARY MOTHER Barry Pain
SWISS AIR Bret Harte
THE BULBUL Owen Seaman
BALLAD Anonymous
OH, MY GERALDINE F.C. Burnand
BUZ, QUOTH THE BLUE FLY Ben Jonson
A SONG ON KING WILLIAM III Anonymous
THERE WAS A MONKEY Anonymous, 1626
THE GUINEA PIG Anonymous
THREE CHILDREN London, 1662
IF Anonymous
A RIDDLE Anonymous
THREE JOVIAL HUNTSMEN Anonymous
THREE ACRES OF LAND Anonymous
MASTER AND MAN Anonymous
HYDER IDDLE Anonymous
KING ARTHUR Anonymous
IN THE DUMPS Anonymous
TWEEDLE-DUM AND TWEE-DLE-DEE Anonymous
MARTIN TO HIS MAN From Deuteromelia
THE YONGHY-BONGHY-BO Edward Lear
THE POBBLE WHO HAS NO TOES Edward Lear
THE JUMBLIES Edward Lear
INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF MY UNCLE ARLY
Edward Lear
LINES TO A YOUNG LADY Edward Lear
WAYS AND MEANS Lewis Carroll
THE WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER Lewis Carroll
THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK Lewis Carroll
SYLVIE AND BRUNO Lewis Carroll
GENTLE ALICE BROWN W.S. Gilbert
THE STORY OF PRINCE AGIB W.S. Gilbert
FERDINANDO AND ELVIRA, OR THE GENTLE PIEMAN
W.S. Gilbert
GENERAL JOHN W. S. Gilbert
LITTLE BILLEE W. M. Thackeray
THE WRECK OF THE "JULIE PLANTE" William H. Drummond
THE SHIPWRECK E. H. Palmer
A SAILOR'S YARN J. J. Roche
THE WALLOPING WINDOW-BLIND Charles E. Carryl
THE ROLLICKING MASTODON Arthur Macy
THE SILVER QUESTION Oliver Herford
THE SINGULAR SANGFROID OF BABY BUNTING
Guy Wetmore Carryl
FAITHLESS NELLY GRAY Thomas Hood
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN George Canning
MALUM OPUS James Appleton Morgan
ÆSTIVATION O. W. Holmes
A HOLIDAY TASK Gilbert Abbott à Becket
PUER EX JERSEY Anonymous
THE LITTLE PEACH Anonymous
MONSIEUR McGINTÉ Anonymous
YE LAYE OF YE WOODPECKORE Henry A. Beers
COLLUSION BETWEEN A ALEGAITER AND A WATER-SNAIK
J. W. Morris
ODD TO A KROKIS Anonymous
SOME VERSES TO SNAIX Anonymous
A GREAT MAN Oliver Goldsmith
AN ELEGY Oliver Goldsmith
PARSON GRAY Oliver Goldsmith
AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF A MAD DOG Oliver Goldsmith
THE WONDERFUL OLD MAN Anonymous
A CHRONICLE Anonymous
ON THE OXFORD CARRIER John Milton
NEPHELIDIA A. C. Swinburne
MARTIN LUTHER AT POTSDAM Barry Pain
COMPANIONS C. S. Calverley
THE COCK AND THE BULL C. S. Calverley
LOVERS AND A REFLECTION C. S. Calverley
AN IMITATION OF WORDSWORTH Catharine M. Fanshawe.
THE FAMOUS BALLAD OF THE JUBILEE CUP Arthur T. Quiller-Couch
A SONG OF IMPOSSIBILITIES W. M. Praed
TRUST IN WOMEN Anonymous
HERE IS THE TALE Anthony C. Deane
THE AULD WIFE C. S. Calverley
NOT I R. L. Stevenson
MINNIE AND WINNIE Lord Tennyson
THE MAYOR OF SCUTTLETON Mary Mapes Dodge
THE PURPLE COW Gelett Burgess
THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE Gelett Burgess
THE LAZY ROOF Gelett Burgess
MY FEET Gelett Burgess
THE HEN Oliver Herford
THE COW Oliver Herford
THE CHIMPANZEE Oliver Herford
THE HIPPOPOTAMUS Oliver Herford
THE PLATYPUS Oliver Herford
SOME GEESE Oliver Herford
THE FLAMINGO Lewis Gaylord Clark
KINDNESS TO ANIMALS J. Ashby-Sterry
SAGE COUNSEL A. T. Quiller-Couch
OF BAITING THE LION Owen Seaman
THE FROG Hilaire Belloc
THE YAK Hilaire Belloc
THE PYTHON Hilaire Belloc
THE BISON Hilaire Belloc
THE PANTHER Anonymous
THE MONKEY'S GLUE Goldwin Goldsmith
THERE WAS A FROG Christ Church MS.
THE BLOATED BIGGABOON H. Cholmondeley-Pennell
WILD FLOWERS Peter Newell
TIMID HORTENSE Peter Newell
HER POLKA DOTS Peter Newell
HER DAIRY Peter Newell
TURVEY TOP Anonymous
WHAT THE PRINCE OF I DREAMT H. Cholmondeley-Pennell
THE DINKEY-BIRD Eugene Field
THE MAN IN THE MOON James Whitcomb Riley
THE STORY OF THE WILD HUNTSMAN Dr. Heinrich Hoffman
THE STORY OF PYRAMID THOTHMES Anonymous
THE STORY OF CRUEL PSAMTEK Anonymous
THE CUMBERBUNCE Paul West
THE AHKOND OF SWAT Edward Lear
A THRENODY George Thomas Lanigan
DIRGE OF THE MOOLLA OF KOTAL George Thomas Lanigan
RUSSIAN AND TURK Anonymous
LINES TO MISS FLORENCE HUNTINGDON Anonymous
COBBE'S PROPHECIES 1614
AN UNSUSPECTED FACT Edward Cannon
THE SORROWS OF WERTHER W. M. Thackeray
NONSENSE VERSES Charles Lamb
THE NOBLE TUCK-MAN Jean Ingelow
THE PESSIMIST Ben King
THE MODERN HIAWATHA Anonymous
ON THE ROAD Tudor Jenks
UNCLE SIMON AND UNCLE JIM Artemus Ward
POOR DEAR GRANDPAPA D'Arcy W. Thompson
THE SEA-SERPENT Planche
MELANCHOLIA Anonymous
THE MONKEY'S WEDDING Anonymous
MR. FINNEY'S TURNIP Anonymous
THE SUN J. Davis
THE AUTUMN LEAVES Anonymous
IN THE NIGHT Anonymous
POOR BROTHER Anonymous
THE BOY Eugene Field
THE SEA Anonymous
THERE WAS A LITTLE GIRL H. W. Longfellow
FIN DE SIÈCLE Newton Mackintosh
MARY JANE Anonymous
TENDER-HEARTEDNESS Col. D. Streamer
IMPETUOUS SAMUEL Col. D. Streamer
MISFORTUNES NEVER COME SINGLY Col. D. Streamer
AUNT ELIZA Col. D. Streamer
SUSAN Anonymous
BABY AND MARY Anonymous
THE SUNBEAM Anonymous
LITTLE WILLIE Anonymous
MARY AMES Anonymous
MUDDLED METAPHORS Tom Hood, Jr.
VILLON'S STRAIGHT TIP TO ALL CROSS COVES
W. E. Henley
ODE TO THE HUMAN HEART Laman Blanchard
LIMERICKS Edward Lear
Anonymous
Cosmo Monkhouse
Walter Parke
George du Maurier
Robert J. Burdette
Gelett Burgess
Bruce Porter
Newton Mackintosh
Anonymous
Anonymous
Anonymous
INTRODUCTION
On a topographical map of Literature Nonsense would be represented
by a small and sparsely settled country, neglected by the average
tourist, but affording keen delight to the few enlightened
travellers who sojourn within its borders. It is a field which has
been neglected by anthologists and essayists; one of its few serious
recognitions being in a certain "Treatise of Figurative Language,"
which says: "Nonsense; shall we dignify that with a place on our list?
Assuredly will vote for doing so every one who hath at all duly
noticed what admirable and wise uses it can be, and often is, put to,
though never before in rhetoric has it been so highly honored. How
deeply does clever or quaint nonsense abide in the memory, and for
how many a decade--from earliest youth to age's most venerable years."
And yet Hazlitt's "Studies in Jocular Literature" mentions six
divisions of the Jest, and omits Nonsense!
Perhaps, partly because of such neglect, the work of the best
nonsense writers is less widely known than it might be.
But a more probable reason is that the majority of the reading world
does not appreciate or enjoy real nonsense, and this, again, is
consequent upon their inability to discriminate between nonsense of
integral merit and simple chaff.
A jest's prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it. Never in the tongue
Of him that makes it,
and a sense of nonsense is as distinct a part of our mentality as a
sense of humor, being by no means identical therewith.
It is a fad at present for a man to relate a nonsensical story, and
then, if his hearer does not laugh, say gravely: "You have no sense
of humor. That is a test story, and only a true humorist laughs at it."
Now, the hearer may have an exquisite sense of humor, but he may be
lacking in a sense of nonsense, and so the story gives him no
pleasure. De Quincey said, "None but a man of extraordinary talent
can write first-rate nonsense." Only a short study of the subject is
required to convince us that De Quincey was right; and he might have
added, none but a man of extraordinary taste can appreciate
first-rate nonsense. As an instance of this, we may remember that
Edward Lear, "the parent of modern nonsense-writers," was a talented
author and artist, and a prime favorite of such men as Tennyson and
the Earls of Derby; and John Ruskin placed Lear's name at the head
of his list of the best hundred authors.
"Don't tell me," said William Pitt, "of a man's being able to talk
sense; every one can talk sense. Can he talk nonsense?"
The sense of nonsense enables us not only to discern pure nonsense,
but to consider intelligently nonsense of various degrees of purity.
Absence of sense is not necessarily nonsense, any more than absence
of justice is injustice.
Etymologically speaking, nonsense may be either words without meaning,
or words conveying absurd or ridiculous ideas. It is the second
definition which expresses the great mass of nonsense literature,
but there is a small proportion of written nonsense which comes
under the head of language without meaning.
Again, there are verses composed entirely of meaningless words,
which are not nonsense literature, because they are written with
some other intent.
The nursery rhyme, of which there are almost as many versions as
there are nurseries,
Eena, meena, mona, mi,
Bassalona, bona, stri,
Hare, ware, frown, whack,
Halico balico, we, wi, we, wack,
is not strictly a nonsense verse, because it was invented and used
for "counting out," and the arbitrary words simply take the place of
the numbers 1, 2, 3, etc.
Also, the nonsense verses with which students of Latin composition
are sometimes taught to begin their efforts, where words are used
with no relative meaning, simply to familiarize the pupil with the
mechanical values of quantity and metre, are not nonsense. It is
only nonsense for nonsense' sake that is now under our consideration.
Doubtless the best and best-known example of versified words without
meaning is "Jabberwocky." Although (notwithstanding Lewis Carroll's
explanations) the coined words are absolutely without meaning, the
rhythm is perfect and the poetic quality decidedly apparent, and the
poem appeals to the nonsense lover as a work of pure genius. Bayard
Taylor is said to have recited "Jabberwocky" aloud for his own
delectation until he was forced to stop by uncontrollable laughter.
To us who know our _Alice_ it would seem unnecessary to quote this
poem, but it is a fact that among the general reading community the
appreciators of Lewis Carroll are surprisingly few. An editor of a
leading literary review, when asked recently if he had read
"Alice in Wonderland," replied, "No, but I mean to. It is by the
author of 'As in a looking-Glass,' is it not?"
But of far greater interest and merit than nonsense of words, is
nonsense of ideas. Here, again, we distinguish between nonsense and
no sense. Ideas conveying no sense are often intensely funny, and
this type is seen in some of the best of our nonsense literature.
A perfect specimen is the bit of evidence read by the White Rabbit
at the Trial of the Knave of Hearts.[1] One charm of these verses is
the serious air of legal directness which pervades their ambiguity,
and another is the precision with which the metrical accent
coincides exactly with the natural emphasis. They are marked, too,
by the liquid euphony that always distinguishes Lewis Carroll's
poetry.
A different type is found in verses that refer to objects in terms
the opposite of true, thereby suggesting ludicrous incongruity, and
there is also the nonsense verse that uses word effects which have
been confiscated by the poets and tacitly given over to them.
A refrain of nonsense words is a favorite diversion of many
otherwise serious poets.
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
is one of Shakespeare's many musical nonsense refrains.
[Footnote 1: "She's all my Fancy painted him," page 20.]
Burns gives us:
Ken ye aught o' Captain Grose?
Igo and ago,
If he's 'mang his freens or foes?
Iram, coram, dago.
Is he slain by Highlan' bodies?
Igo and ago;
And eaten like a weather haggis?
Iram, coram, dago.
Another very old refrain runs thus:
Forum, corum, sunt di-vorum,
Harum, scarum, divo;
Tag-rag, merry-derry, periwig and hat-band,
Hic, hoc, horum, genitivo.
An old ballad written before the Reformation has for a refrain:
Sing go trix,
Trim go trix,
Under the greenwood tree.
While a celebrated political ballad is known by its nonsense chorus,
Lilliburlero bullin a-la.
Mother Goose rhymes abound in these nonsense refrains, and they are
often fine examples of onomatopoeia.
By far the most meritorious and most interesting kind of nonsense is
that which embodies an absurd or ridiculous idea, and treats it with
elaborate seriousness. The greatest masters of this art are
undoubtedly Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. These Englishmen were men
of genius, deep thinkers, and hard workers.
Lear was an artist draughtsman, his subjects being mainly
ornithological and zoological. Lewis Carroll (Charles L. Dodgson)
was an expert in mathematics and a lecturer on that science in
Christ Church, Oxford.
Both these men numbered among their friends many of the greatest
Englishmen of the day. Tennyson was a warm friend and admirer of each,
as was also John Ruskin.
Lear's first nonsense verses, published in 1846, are written in the
form of the well-known stanza beginning:
There was an old man of Tobago.
This type of stanza, known as the "Limerick," is said by a gentleman
who speaks with authority to have flourished in the reign of William
IV. This is one of several he remembers as current at his public
school in 1834:
There was a young man at St. Kitts
Who was very much troubled with fits;
The eclipse of the moon
Threw him into a swoon,
When he tumbled and broke into bits.
Lear distinctly asserts that this form of verse was not invented by
him, but was suggested by a friend as a useful model for amusing
rhymes. It proved so in his case, for he published no less than two
hundred and twelve of these "Limericks."
In regard to his verses, Lear asserted that "nonsense, pure and
absolute," was his aim throughout; and remarked, further, that to
have been the means of administering innocent mirth to thousands was
surely a just excuse for satisfaction. He pursued his aim with
scrupulous consistency, and his absurd conceits are fantastic and
ridiculous, but never cheaply or vulgarly funny.
Twenty-five years after his first book came out, Lear published
other books of nonsense verse and prose, with pictures which are
irresistibly mirth-provoking. Lear's nonsense songs, while retaining
all the ludicrous merriment of his Limericks, have an added quality
of poetic harmony. They are distinctly _singable_, and many of them
have been set to music by talented composers. Perhaps the best-known
songs are "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat" and "The Daddy-Long-Legs and
the Fly."
Lear himself composed airs for "The Pelican Chorus" and "The
Yonghy-Bonghy Bo," which were arranged for the piano by Professor Pomè,
of San Remo, Italy.
Although like Lear's in some respects, Lewis Carroll's nonsense is
perhaps of a more refined type. There is less of the grotesque and
more poetic imagery. But though Carroll was more of a poet than Lear,
both had the true sense of nonsense. Both assumed the most absurd
conditions, and proceeded to detail their consequences with a simple
seriousness that convulses appreciative readers, and we find
ourselves uncertain whether it is the manner or the matter that is
more amusing.
Lewis Carroll was a man of intellect and education; his funniest
sayings are often based on profound knowledge or deep thought. Like
Lear, he never spoiled his quaint fancies by over-exaggerating their
quaintness or their fancifulness, and his ridiculous plots are as
carefully conceived, constructed, and elaborated as though they
embodied the soundest facts. No funny detail is ever allowed to
become _too_ funny; and it is in this judicious economy of
extravagance that his genius is shown. As he remarks in one of his
own poems:
Then, fourthly, there are epithets
That suit with any word--
As well as Harvey's Reading Sauce
With fish, or flesh, or bird.
Such epithets, like pepper,
Give zest to what you write;
And, if you strew them sparely,
They whet the appetite;
But if you lay them on too thick,
You spoil the matter quite!
Both Lear and Carroll suffered from the undiscerning critics who
persisted in seeing in their nonsense a hidden meaning, a cynical,
political, or other intent, veiled under the apparent foolery. Lear
takes occasion to deny this in the preface to one of his books, and
asserts not only that his rhymes and pictures have no symbolical
meaning, but that he "took more care than might be supposed to make
the subjects incapable of such misinterpretation."
Likewise, "Jabberwocky" was declared by one critic to be a
translation from the German, and by others its originality was
doubted. The truth is, that it was written by Lewis Carroll at an
evening party; it was quite impromptu, and no ulterior meaning was
intended. "The Hunting of the Snark" was also regarded by some as an
allegory, or, perhaps, a burlesque on a celebrated case, in which
the _Snark_ was used as a personification of popularity, but Lewis
Carroll protested that the poem had no meaning at all.
A favorite trick of the Nonsensists is the coining of words to suit
their needs, and Lear and Carroll are especially happy in their
inventions of this kind.
Lear gives us such gems as scroobious, meloobious, ombliferous,
borascible, slobaciously, himmeltanious, flumpetty, and mumbian;
while the best of Lewis Carroll's coined words are those found in
"Jabberwocky."
Another of the great Nonsensists is W. S. Gilbert. Unlike Lear or
Carroll, his work is not characterized by absurd words or phrases;
he prefers a still wider scope, and invents a ridiculous plot. The
"Bab Ballads," as well as Mr. Gilbert's comic opera librettos, hinge
upon schemes of ludicrous impossibility, which are treated as the
most natural proceedings in the world. The best known of the
"Bab Ballads" is no doubt "The Yarn of the 'Nancy Bell,'" which was
long since set to music and is still a popular song. In addition to
his talent for nonsense, Mr. Gilbert possesses a wonderful rhyming
facility, and juggles cleverly with difficult and unusual metres.
In regard to his "Bab Ballads," Mr. Gilbert gravely says that
"they are not, as a rule, founded on fact," and, remembering their
gory and often cannibalistic tendencies, we are grateful for this
assurance. An instance of Gilbert's appreciation of other people's
nonsense is his parody of Lear's verse:
There was an old man in a tree
Who was horribly bored by a bee;
When they said, "Does it buzz?"
He replied, "Yes, it does!
It's a regular brute of a bee!"
The parody attributed to Gilbert is called "A Nonsense Rhyme in
Blank Verse":
There was an old man of St. Bees,
Who was stung in the arm by a wasp;
When they asked, "Does it hurt?"
He replied, "No, it doesn't,
But I thought all the while 'twas a Hornet!"
Thackeray wrote spirited nonsense, but much of it had an
under-meaning, political or otherwise, which bars it from the field
of sheer nonsense.
The sense of nonsense is no respecter of persons; even staid old
Dr. Johnson possessed it, though his nonsense verses are marked by
credible fact and irrefutable logic. Witness these two examples:
As with my hat upon my head
I walked along the Strand,
I there did meet another man
With his hat in his hand.
The tender infant, meek and mild,
Fell down upon the stone;
The nurse took up the squealing child,
But still the child squealed on.
The Doctor is also responsible for
If a man who turnips cries,
Cry not when his father dies,
'Tis a proof that he would rather
Have a turnip than a father.
And indeed, among our best writers there are few who have not
dropped into nonsense or semi-nonsense at one time or another.
A familiar bit of nonsense prose is by S. Foote, and it is said that
Charles Macklin used to recite it with great gusto:
"She went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf to make
an apple-pie, and at the same time a great she-bear coming
up the street, pops its head into the shop. 'What, no
soap?' so he died. She imprudently married the barber,
and there were present the Pickaninnies, the Joblilies, the
Gayrulies, and the Grand Panjandrum himself with the little
round button on top, and they all fell to playing
catch-as-catch-can
till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their
boots."
[Transcriber's note: The above paragraph is not an excerpt from a
longer work, but is complete as it stands.]
An old nonsense verse attributed to an Oxford student, is the well
known:
A centipede was happy quite,
Until a frog in fun
Said, "Pray, which leg comes after which?"
This raised her mind to such a pitch,
She lay distracted in the ditch
Considering how to run.
So far as we know, Kipling has never printed anything which can be
called nonsense verse, but it is doubtless only a question of time
when that branch shall be added to his versatility. His "Just So"
stories are capital nonsense prose, and the following rhyme proves
him guilty of at least one Limerick:
There was a small boy of Quebec,
Who was buried in snow to his neck;
When they said, "Are you friz?"
He replied, "Yes, I is--
But we don't call this cold in Quebec."
Among living authors, one who has written a great amount of good
nonsense is Mr. Gelett Burgess, late editor of _The Lark_.
According to Mr. Burgess' own statement, the test of nonsense is its
quotability, and his work stands this test admirably, for what
absurd rhyme ever attained such popularity as his "Purple Cow"? This
was first printed in _The Lark_, a paper published in San
Francisco for two years, the only periodical of any merit that has
ever made intelligent nonsense its special feature.
Another of the most talented nonsense writers of to-day is Mr. Oliver
Herford. It is a pity, however, to reproduce his verse without his
illustrations, for as nonsense these are as admirable as the text.
But the greater part of Mr. Herford's work belongs to the realm
of pure fancy, and though of a whimsical delicacy often equal to
Lewis Carroll's, it is rarely sheer nonsense.
As a proof that good nonsense is by no means an easy achievement,
attention is called to a recent competition inaugurated by the
London _Academy_.
Nonsense rhymes similar to those quoted from _The Lark_ were asked
for, and though many were received, it is stated that no brilliant
results were among them.
The prize was awarded to this weak and uninteresting specimen:
"If half the road was made of jam,
The other half of bread,
How very nice my walks would be,"
The greedy infant said.
These two were also offered by competitors:
I love to stand upon my head
And think of things sublime
Until my mother interrupts
And says it's dinner-time.
A lobster wooed a lady crab,
And kissed her lovely face.
"Upon my sole," the crabbess cried,
"I wish you'd mind your plaice!"
Let us, then, give Nonsense its place among the divisions of Humor,
and though we cannot reduce it to an exact science, let us
acknowledge it as a fine art.
A NONSENSE ANTHOLOGY
JABBERWOCKY
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought.
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through, and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
Oh, frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.
'T was brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves
And the mome raths outgrabe.
_Lewis Carroll_.
MORS IABROCHII
Coesper[1] erat: tunc lubriciles[2] ultravia circum
Urgebant gyros gimbiculosque tophi;
Moestenui visae borogovides ire meatu;
Et profugi gemitus exgrabuêre rathae.
O fuge Iabrochium, sanguis meus![3] Ille recurvis
Unguibus, estque avidis dentibus ille minax.
Ububae fuge cautus avis vim, gnate! Neque unquam
Faederpax contra te frumiosus eat!
Vorpali gladio juvenis succingitur: hostis
Manxumus ad medium quaeritur usque diem:
Jamque viâ fesso, sed plurima mente prementi,
Tumtumiae frondis suaserat umbra moram.
Consilia interdum stetit egnia[4] mene revolvens;
At gravis in densa fronde susuffrus[5] erat,
Spiculaque[6] ex oculis jacientis flammea, tulseam
Per silvam venit burbur[7] labrochii!
Vorpali, semel atque iterum collectus in ictum,
Persnicuit gladis persnacuitque puer:
Deinde galumphatus, spernens informe Cadaver,
Horrendum monstri rettulit ipse caput.
Victor Iabrochii, spoliis insignis opimis,
Rursus in amplexus, o radiose, meos!
O frabiose dies! CALLO clamateque CALLA!
Vix potuit lastus chorticulare pater.
Coesper erat: tune lubriciles ultravia circum
Urgebant gyros gimbiculosque tophi;
Moestenui visæ borogovides ire meatu;
Et profugi gemitus exgrabuêre rathæ.
_Anonymous_.
[Footnote 1: _Coesper_ from _Coena_ and _vesper_.]
[Footnote 2: _lubriciles_ from _lubricus_ and _graciles_. See the
Commentary in Humpty Dumpty's square, which will also explain
_ultravia_, and--if it requires explanation--_moestenui_.]
[Footnote 3: _Sanguis meus_: cf. Verg. Aen. 6. 836, "Projice tela
manu, sanguis meus!"]
[Footnote 4: _egnia_: "muffish" = segnis; ... "uffish" = egnis.
This is a conjectural analogy, but I can suggest no better solution.]
[Footnote 5: _susuffrus_ : "whiffling" :: _susurrus_ : "whistling."]
[Footnote 6: _spicula_: see the picture.]
[Footnote 7: _burbur_: apparently a labial variation of _murmur_,
stronger but more dissonant.]
_THE NYUM-NYUM_
The Nyum-Nyum chortled by the sea,
And sipped the wavelets green:
He wondered how the sky could be
So very nice and clean;
He wondered if the chambermaid
Had swept the dust away,
And if the scrumptious Jabberwock
Had mopped it up that day.
And then in sadness to his love
The Nyum-Nyum weeping said,
I know no reason why the sea
Should not be white or red.
I know no reason why the sea
Should not be red, I say;
And why the slithy Bandersnatch
Has not been round to-day.
He swore he'd call at two o'clock,
And now it's half-past four.
"Stay," said the Nyum-Nyum's love, "I think
I hear him at the door."
In twenty minutes in there came
A creature black as ink,
Which put its feet upon a chair
And called for beer to drink.
They gave him porter in a tub,
But, "Give me more!" he cried;
And then he drew a heavy sigh,
And laid him down, and died.
He died, and in the Nyum-Nyum's cave
A cry of mourning rose;
The Nyum-Nyum sobbed a gentle sob,
And slily blew his nose.
The Nyum-Nyum's love, we need not state,
Was overwhelmed and sad;
She said, "Oh, take the corpse away,
Or you will drive me mad!"
The Nyum-Nyum in his supple arms
Took up the gruesome weight,
And, with a cry of bitter fear,
He threw it at his mate.
And then he wept, and tore his hair,
And threw it in the sea,
And loudly sobbed with streaming eyes
That such a thing could be.
The ox, that mumbled in his stall,
Perspired and gently sighed,
And then, in sympathy, it fell
Upon its back and died.
The hen that sat upon her eggs,
With high ambition fired,
Arose in simple majesty,
And, with a cluck, expired.
The jubejube bird, that carolled there,
Sat down upon a post,
And with a reverential caw,
Gave up its little ghost.
And ere its kind and loving life
Eternally had ceased,
The donkey, in the ancient barn,
In agony deceased.
The raven, perched upon the elm,
Gave forth a scraping note,
And ere the sound had died away,
Had cut its tuneful throat.
The Nyum-Nyum's love was sorrowful;
And, after she had cried,
She, with a brand-new carving-knife,
Committed suicide.
"Alas!" the Nyum-Nyum said, "alas!
With thee I will not part,"
And straightway seized a rolling-pin
And drove it through his heart.
The mourners came and gathered up
The bits that lay about;
But why the massacre had been,
They could not quite make out.
One said there was a mystery
Connected with the deaths;
But others thought the silent ones
Perhaps had lost their breaths.
The doctor soon arrived, and viewed
The corpses as they lay;
He could not give them life again,
So he was heard to say.
But, oh! it was a horrid sight;
It made the blood run cold,
To see the bodies carried off
And covered up with mould.
The Toves across the briny sea
Wept buckets-full of tears;
They were relations of the dead,
And had been friends for years.
The Jabberwock upon the hill
Gave forth a gloomy wail,
When in his airy seat he sat,
And told the awful tale.
And who can wonder that it made
That loving creature cry?
For he had done the dreadful work
And caused the things to die.
That Jabberwock was passing bad--
That Jabberwock was wrong,
And with this verdict I conclude
One portion of my song.
_Anonymous_.
UFFIA
When sporgles spanned the floreate mead
And cogwogs gleet upon the lea,
Uffia gopped to meet her love
Who smeeged upon the equat sea.
Dately she walked aglost the sand;
The boreal wind seet in her face;
The moggling waves yalped at her feet;
Pangwangling was her pace.
_Harriet R. White_.
SPIRK TROLL-DERISIVE
The Crankadox leaned o'er the edge of the moon,
And wistfully gazed on the sea
Where the Gryxabodill madly whistled a tune
To the air of "Ti-fol-de-ding-dee."
The quavering shriek of the Fliupthecreek
Was fitfully wafted afar
To the Queen of the Wunks as she powdered her cheek
With the pulverized rays of a star.
The Gool closed his ear on the voice of the Grig,
And his heart it grew heavy as lead
As he marked the Baldekin adjusting his wig
On the opposite side of his head;
And the air it grew chill as the Gryxabodill
Raised his dank, dripping fins to the skies
To plead with the Plunk for the use of her bill
To pick the tears out of his eyes.
The ghost of the Zhack flitted by in a trance;
And the Squidjum hid under a tub
As he heard the loud hooves of the Hooken advance
With a rub-a-dub-dub-a-dub dub!
And the Crankadox cried as he laid down and died,
"My fate there is none to bewail!"
While the Queen of the Wunks drifted over the tide
With a long piece of crape to her tail.
_James Whitcomb Riley_.
THE WHANGO TREE
The woggly bird sat on the whango tree,
Nooping the rinkum corn,
And graper and graper, alas! grew he,
And cursed the day he was born.
His crute was clum and his voice was rum,
As curiously thus sang he,
"Oh, would I'd been rammed and eternally clammed
Ere I perched on this whango tree."
Now the whango tree had a bubbly thorn,
As sharp as a nootie's bill,
And it stuck in the woggly bird's umptum lorn
And weepadge, the smart did thrill.
He fumbled and cursed, but that wasn't the worst,
For he couldn't at all get free,
And he cried, "I am gammed, and injustibly nammed
On the luggardly whango tree."
And there he sits still, with no worm in his bill,
Nor no guggledom in his nest;
He is hungry and bare, and gobliddered with care,
And his grabbles give him no rest;
He is weary and sore and his tugmut is soar,
And nothing to nob has he,
As he chirps, "I am blammed and corruptibly jammed,
In this cuggerdom whango tree."
_1840_.
SING FOR THE GARISH EYE
Sing for the garish eye,
When moonless brandlings cling!
Let the froddering crooner cry,
And the braddled sapster sing,
For never and never again,
Will the tottering beechlings play,
For bratticed wrackers are singing aloud,
And the throngers croon in May!
_W.S. Gilbert_.
THE CRUISE OF THE "P.C."
Across the swiffling waves they went,
The gumly bark yoked to and fro:
The jupple crew on pleasure bent,
Galored, "This is a go!"
Beside the poo's'l stood the Gom,
He chirked and murgled in his glee;
While near him, in a grue jipon,
The Bard was quite at sea.
"Gollop! Golloy! Thou scrumjous Bard!
Take pen (thy stylo) and endite
A pome, my brain needs kurgling hard,
And I will feast tonight."
That wansome Bard he took his pen,
A flirgly look around he guv;
He squoffled once, he squirled, and then
He wrote what's writ above.
_Anonymous_.
TO MARIE
When the breeze from the bluebottle's blustering blim
Twirls the toads in a tooroomaloo,
And the whiskery whine of the wheedlesome whim
Drowns the roll of the rattatattoo,
Then I dream in the shade of the shally-go-shee,
And the voice of the bally-molay
Brings the smell of stale poppy-cods blummered in blee
From the willy-wad over the way.
Ah, the shuddering shoo and the blinketty-blanks
When the yungalung falls from the bough
In the blast of a hurricane's hicketty-hanks
On the hills of the hocketty-how!
Give the rigamarole to the clangery-whang,
If they care for such fiddlededee;
But the thingumbob kiss of the whangery-bang
Keeps the higgledy-piggle for me.
_L'ENVOI_
It is pilly-po-doddle and aligobung
When the lollypop covers the ground,
Yet the poldiddle perishes punketty-pung
When the heart jimmy-coggles around.
If the soul cannot snoop at the giggle-some cart,
Seeking surcease in gluggety-glug,
It is useless to say to the pulsating heart,
"Panky-doodle ker-chuggetty-chug!"
_John Bennett_.
_LUNAR STANZAS_
Night saw the crew like pedlers with their packs
Altho' it were too dear to pay for eggs;
Walk crank along with coffin on their backs
While in their arms they bow their weary legs.
And yet 't was strange, and scarce can one suppose
That a brown buzzard-fly should steal and wear
His white jean breeches and black woollen hose,
But thence that flies have souls is very clear.
But, Holy Father! what shall save the soul,
When cobblers ask three dollars for their shoes?
When cooks their biscuits with a shot-tower roll,
And farmers rake their hay-cocks with their hoes.
Yet, 'twere profuse to see for pendant light,
A tea-pot dangle in a lady's ear;
And 'twere indelicate, although she might
Swallow two whales and yet the moon shine clear.
But what to me are woven clouds, or what,
If dames from spiders learn to warp their looms?
If coal-black ghosts turn soldiers for the State,
With wooden eyes, and lightning-rods for plumes?
Oh! too, too shocking! barbarous, savage taste!
To eat one's mother ere itself was born!
To gripe the tall town-steeple by the waste,
And scoop it out to be his drinking-horn.
No more: no more! I'm sick and dead and gone;
Boxed in a coffin, stifled six feet deep;
Thorns, fat and fearless, prick my skin and bone,
And revel o'er me, like a soulless sheep.
_Henry Coggswell Knight, 1815_.
NONSENSE
Oh that my Lungs could bleat like butter'd Pease;
But bleating of my lungs hath Caught the itch,
And are as mangy as the Irish Seas
That offer wary windmills to the Rich.
I grant that Rainbowes being lull'd asleep,
Snort like a woodknife in a Lady's eyes;
Which makes her grieve to see a pudding creep,
For Creeping puddings only please the wise.
Not that a hard-row'd herring should presume
To swing a tyth pig in a Cateskin purse;
For fear the hailstons which did fall at Rome,
By lesning of the fault should make it worse.
For 'tis most certain Winter woolsacks grow
From geese to swans if men could keep them so,
Till that the sheep shorn Planets gave the hint
To pickle pancakes in Geneva print.
Some men there were that did suppose the skie
Was made of Carbonado'd Antidotes;
But my opinion is, a Whale's left eye,
Need not be coyned all King Harry groates.
The reason's plain, for Charon's Westerne barge
Running a tilt at the Subjunctive mood,
Beckoned to Bednal Green, and gave him charge
To fasten padlockes with Antartic food.
The End will be the Mill ponds must be laded,
To fish for white pots in a Country dance;
So they that suffered wrong and were upbraded
Shall be made friends in a left-handed trance.
_Anonymous, 1617_.
SONNET FOUND IN A DESERTED MAD HOUSE
Oh that my soul a marrow-bone might seize!
For the old egg of my desire is broken,
Spilled is the pearly white and spilled the yolk, and
As the mild melancholy contents grease
My path the shorn lamb baas like bumblebees.
Time's trashy purse is as a taken token
Or like a thrilling recitation, spoken
By mournful mouths filled full of mirth and cheese.
And yet, why should I clasp the earthful urn?
Or find the frittered fig that felt the fast?
Or choose to chase the cheese around the churn?
Or swallow any pill from out the past?
Ah, no Love, not while your hot kisses burn
Like a potato riding on the blast.
_Anonymous_.
THE OCEAN WANDERER
Bright breaks the warrior o'er the ocean wave
Through realms that rove not, clouds that cannot save,
Sinks in the sunshine; dazzles o'er the tomb
And mocks the mutiny of Memory's gloom.
Oh! who can feel the crimson ecstasy
That soothes with bickering jar the Glorious Tree?
O'er the high rock the foam of gladness throws,
While star-beams lull Vesuvius to repose:
Girds the white spray, and in the blue lagoon,
Weeps like a walrus o'er the waning moon?
Who can declare?--not thou, pervading boy
Whom pibrochs pierce not, crystals cannot cloy;--
Not thou soft Architect of silvery gleams,
Whose soul would simmer in Hesperian streams,
Th' exhaustless fire--the bosom's azure bliss,
That hurtles, life-like, o'er a scene like this;--
Defies the distant agony of Day--
And sweeps o'er hetacombs--away! away!
Say shall Destruction's lava load the gale,
The furnace quiver and the mountain quail?
Say shall the son of Sympathy pretend
His cedar fragrance with our Chiefs to blend?
There, where the gnarled monuments of sand
Howl their dark whirlwinds to the levin brand;
Conclusive tenderness; fraternal grog,
Tidy conjunction; adamantine bog,
Impetuous arrant toadstool; Thundering quince,
Repentant dog-star, inessential Prince,
Expound. Pre-Adamite eventful gun,
Crush retribution, currant-jelly, pun,
Oh! eligible Darkness, fender, sting,
Heav'n-born Insanity, courageous thing.
Intending, bending, scouring, piercing all,
Death like pomatum, tea, and crabs must fall.
_Anonymous_.
SHE'S ALL MY FANCY PAINTED HIM
She's all my fancy painted him,
(I make no idle boast);
If he or you had lost a limb,
Which would have suffered most?
He said that you had been to her,
And seen me here before:
But, in another character
She was the same of yore.
There was not one that spoke to us,
Of all that thronged the street;
So he sadly got into a 'bus,
And pattered with his feet.
They told me you had been to her,
And mentioned me to him;
She gave me a good character,
But said I could not swim.
He sent them word I had not gone
(We know it to be true);
If she should push the matter on,
What would become of you?
I gave her one, they gave him two,
You gave us three or more;
They all returned from him to you,
Though they were mine before.
If I or she should chance to be
Involved in this affair,
He trusts to you to set them free,
Exactly as we were.
My notion was that you had been
(Before she had this fit)
An obstacle that came between
Him, and ourselves, and it.
Don't let him know she liked them best,
For this must ever be
A secret, kept from all the rest,
Between yourself and me.
_Lewis Carroll_.
MY RECOLLECTEST THOUGHTS
My recollectest thoughts are those
Which I remember yet;
And bearing on, as you'd suppose,
The things I don't forget.
But my resemblest thoughts are less
Alike than they should be;
A state of things, as you'll confess,
You very seldom see.
And yet the mostest thought I love
Is what no one believes--
That I'm the sole survivor of
The famous Forty Thieves!
_Charles E. Carry_.
FATHER WILLIAM
"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"And your nose has a look of surprise;
Your eyes have turned round to the back of your head,
And you live upon cucumber pies."
"I know it, I know it," the old man replied,
"And it comes from employing a quack,
Who said if I laughed when the crocodile died
I should never have pains in my back."
"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"And your legs always get in your way;
You use too much mortar in mixing your bread,
And you try to drink timothy hay."
"Very true, very true," said the wretched old man,
"Every word that you tell me is true;
And it's caused by my having my kerosene can
Painted red where it ought to be blue."
"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"And your teeth are beginning to freeze,
Your favorite daughter has wheels in her head,
And the chickens are eating your knees."
"You are right," said the old man, "I cannot deny,
That my troubles are many and great,
But I'll butter my ears on the Fourth of July,
And then I'll be able to skate."
_Anonymous_.
IN THE GLOAMING
The twilight twiles in the vernal vale,
In adumbration of azure awe,
And I listlessly list in my swallow-tail
To the limpet licking his limber jaw.
And it's O for the sound of the daffodil,
For the dry distillings of prawn and prout,
When hope hops high and a heather hill
Is a dear delight and a darksome doubt.
The snagwap sits in the bosky brae
And sings to the gumplet in accents sweet;
The gibwink hasn't a word to say,
But pensively smiles at the fair keeweet.
And it's O for the jungles of Boorabul.
For the jingling jungles to jangle in,
With a moony maze of mellado mull,
And a protoplasm for next of kin.
O, sweet is the note of the shagreen shard
And mellow the mew of the mastodon,
When the soboliferous Somminard
Is scenting the shadows at set of sun.
And it's O for the timorous tamarind
In the murky meadows of Mariboo,
For the suave sirocco of Sazerkind,
And the pimpernell pellets of Pangipoo.
_James C. Bayles_.
BALLAD OF BEDLAM
Oh, lady, wake! the azure moon
Is rippling in the verdant skies,
The owl is warbling his soft tune,
Awaiting but thy snowy eyes.
The joys of future years are past,
To-morrow's hopes have fled away;
Still let us love, and e'en at last
We shall be happy yesterday.
The early beam of rosy night
Drives off the ebon morn afar,
While through the murmur of the light
The huntsman winds his mad guitar.
Then, lady, wake! my brigantine
Pants, neighs, and prances to be free;
Till the creation I am thine,
To some rich desert fly with me.
_Punch_.
'TIS SWEET TO ROAM
'Tis sweet to roam when morning's light
Resounds across the deep;
And the crystal song of the woodbine bright
Hushes the rocks to sleep,
And the blood-red moon in the blaze of noon
Is bathed in a crumbling dew,
And the wolf rings out with a glittering shout,
To-whit, to-whit, to-whoo!
_Anonymous_.
HYMN TO THE SUNRISE
The dreamy crags with raucous voices croon
Across the zephyr's heliotrope career;
I sit contentedly upon the moon
And watch the sunlight trickle round the sphere.
The shiny trill of jagged, feathered rocks
I hear with glee as swift I fly away;
And over waves of subtle, woolly flocks
Crashes the breaking day!
_Anonymous_.
THE MOON IS UP
The moon is up, the moon is up!
The larks begin to fly,
And, like a drowsy buttercup,
Dark Phoebus skims the sky,
The elephant, with cheerful voice,
Sings blithely on the spray;
The bats and beetles all rejoice,
Then let me, too, be gay.
I would I were a porcupine,
And wore a peacock's tail;
To-morrow, if the moon but shine,
Perchance I'll be a whale.
Then let me, like the cauliflower,
Be merry while I may,
And, ere there comes a sunny hour
To cloud my heart, be gay!
_Anonymous_.
'TIS MIDNIGHT
'Tis midnight, and the setting sun
Is slowly rising in the west;
The rapid rivers slowly run,
The frog is on his downy nest.
The pensive goat and sportive cow,
Hilarious, leap from bough to bough.
_Anonymous_.
UPRISING SEE THE FITFUL LARK
Uprising see the fitful lark
Unfold his pinion to the stream;
The pensive watch-dog's mellow bark
O'ershades yon cottage like a dream:
The playful duck and warbling bee
Hop gayly on, from tree to tree!
How calmly could my spirit rest
Beneath yon primrose bell so blue,
And watch those airy oxen drest
In every tint of pearling hue!
As on they hurl the gladsome plough,
While fairy zephyrs deck each brow!
_Anonymous_.
LIKE TO THE THUNDERING TONE
Like to the thundering tone of unspoke speeches,
Or like a lobster clad in logic breeches,
Or like the gray fur of a crimson cat,
Or like the mooncalf in a slipshod hat;
E'en such is he who never was begotten
Until his children were both dead and rotten.
Like to the fiery tombstone of a cabbage,
Or like a crab-louse with its bag and baggage,
Or like the four square circle of a ring,
Or like to hey ding, ding-a, ding-a, ding;
E'en such is he who spake, and yet, no doubt,
Spake to small purpose, when his tongue was out.
Like to a fair, fresh, fading, wither'd rose,
Or like to rhyming verse that runs in prose,
Or like the stumbles of a tinder-box,
Or like a man that's sound yet sickness mocks;
E'en such is he who died and yet did laugh
To see these lines writ for his epitaph.
_Bishop Corbet
in 17th century_.
MY DREAM
I dreamed a dream next Tuesday week,
Beneath the apple-trees;
I thought my eyes were big pork-pies,
And my nose was Stilton cheese.
The clock struck twenty minutes to six,
When a frog sat on my knee;
I asked him to lend me eighteenpence,
But he borrowed a shilling of me.
_Anonymous_.
MY HOME
My home is on the rolling deep,
I spend my time a-feeding sheep;
And when the waves on high are running,
I take my gun and go a-gunning.
I shoot wild ducks down deep snake-holes,
And drink gin-sling from two-quart bowls.
_Anonymous_.
IN IMMEMORIAM
We seek to know, and knowing seek;
We seek, we know, and every sense
Is trembling with the great intense,
And vibrating to what we speak.
We ask too much, we seek too oft;
We know enough and should no more;
And yet we skim through Fancy's lore,
And look to earth and not aloft.
* * * * *
O Sea! whose ancient ripples lie
On red-ribbed sands where seaweeds shone;
O moon! whose golden sickle's gone,
O voices all! like you I die!
_Cuthbert Bede_.
THE HIGHER PANTHEISM IN A NUTSHELL
One, who is not, we see; but one, whom we see not, is;
Surely, this is not that; but that is assuredly this.
What, and wherefore, and whence: for under is over and under;
If thunder could be without lightning, lightning could be without
thunder.
Doubt is faith in the main; but faith, on the whole, is doubt;
We cannot believe by proof; but could we believe without?
Why, and whither, and how? for barley and rye are not clover;
Neither are straight lines curves; yet over is under and over.
One and two are not one; but one and nothing is two;
Truth can hardly be false, if falsehood cannot be true.
Parallels all things are; yet many of these are askew;
You are certainly I; but certainly I am not you.
One, whom we see not, is; and one, who is not, we see;
Fiddle, we know, is diddle; and diddle, we take it, is dee.
_A.C. Swinburne_.
DARWINITY
Power to thine elbow, thou newest of sciences,
All the old landmarks are ripe for decay;
Wars are but shadows, and so are alliances,
Darwin the great is the man of the day.
All other 'ologies want an apology;
Bread's a mistake--Science offers a stone;
Nothing is true but Anthropobiology--
Darwin the great understands it alone.
Mighty the great evolutionist teacher is,
Licking Morphology clean into shape;
Lord! what an ape the Professor or Preacher is,
Ever to doubt his descent from an ape.
Man's an Anthropoid--he cannot help that, you know--
First evoluted from Pongos of old;
He's but a branch of the _catarrhine_ cat, you know--
Monkey I mean--that's an ape with a cold.
Fast dying out are man's later Appearances,
Cataclysmitic Geologies gone;
Now of Creation completed the clearance is,
Darwin alone you must anchor upon.
Primitive Life--Organisms were chemical,
Busting spontaneous under the sea;
Purely subaqueous, panaquademical,
Was the original Crystal of Me.
I'm the Apostle of mighty Darwinity,
Stands for Divinity--sounds much the same--
Apo-theistico-Pan-Asininity
Only can doubt whence the lot of us came.
Down on your knees, Superstition and Flunkeydom!
Won't you accept such plain doctrines instead?
What is so simple as primitive Monkeydom
Born in the sea with a cold in its head?
_Herman Merivale_.
SONG OF THE SCREW
A moving form or rigid mass,
Under whate'er conditions
Along successive screws must pass
Between each two positions.
It turns around and slides along--
This is the burden of my song.
The pitch of screw, if multiplied
By angle of rotation,
Will give the distance it must glide
In motion of translation.
Infinite pitch means pure translation,
And zero pitch means pure rotation.
Two motions on two given screws,
With amplitudes at pleasure,
Into a third screw-motion fuse;
Whose amplitude we measure
By parallelogram construction
(A very obvious deduction.)
Its axis cuts the nodal line
Which to both screws is normal,
And generates a form divine,
Whose name, in language formal,
Is "surface-ruled of third degree."
Cylindroid is the name for me.
Rotation round a given line
Is like a force along.
If to say couple you incline,
You're clearly in the wrong;--
'Tis obvious, upon reflection,
A line is not a mere direction.
So couples with translations too
In all respects agree;
And thus there centres in the screw
A wondrous harmony
Of Kinematics and of Statics,--
The sweetest thing in mathematics.
The forces on one given screw,
With motion on a second,
In general some work will do,
Whose magnitude is reckoned
By angle, force, and what we call
The coefficient virtual.
Rotation now to force convert,
And force into rotation;
Unchanged the work, we can assert,
In spite of transformation.
And if two screws no work can claim,
Reciprocal will be their name.
Five numbers will a screw define,
A screwing motion, six;
For four will give the axial line,
One more the pitch will fix;
And hence we always can contrive
One screw reciprocal to five.
Screws--two, three, four or five, combined
(No question here of six),
Yield other screws which are confined
Within one screw complex.
Thus we obtain the clearest notion
Of freedom and constraint of motion.
In complex III., three several screws
At every point you find,
Or if you one direction choose,
One screw is to your mind;
And complexes of order III.
Their own reciprocals may be.
In IV., wherever you arrive,
You find of screws a cone,
On every line in complex V.
There is precisely one;
At each point of this complex rich,
A plane of screws have given pitch.
But time would fail me to discourse
Of Order and Degree;
Of Impulse, Energy and Force,
And Reciprocity.
All these and more, for motions small,
Have been discussed by Dr. Ball.
_Anonymous_.
MOORLANDS OF THE NOT
Across the moorlands of the Not
We chase the gruesome When;
And hunt the Itness of the What
Through forests of the Then.
Into the Inner Consciousness
We track the crafty Where;
We spear the Ego tough, and beard
The Selfhood in his lair.
With lassos of the brain we catch
The Isness of the Was;
And in the copses of the Whence
We hear the think bees buzz.
We climb the slippery Whichbark tree
To watch the Thusness roll
And pause betimes in gnostic rimes
To woo the Over Soul.
_Anonymous_.
METAPHYSICS
Why and Wherefore set out one day
To hunt for a wild Negation.
They agreed to meet at a cool retreat
On the Point of Interrogation.
But the night was dark and they missed their mark,
And, driven well-nigh to distraction,
They lost their ways in a murky maze
Of utter abstruse abstraction.
Then they took a boat and were soon afloat
On a sea of Speculation,
But the sea grew rough, and their boat, though tough,
Was split into an Equation.
As they floundered about in the waves of doubt
Rose a fearful Hypothesis,
Who gibbered with glee as they sank in the sea,
And the last they saw was this:
On a rock-bound reef of Unbelief
There sat the wild Negation;
Then they sank once more and were washed ashore
At the Point of Interrogation.
_Oliver Herford_.
ABSTROSOPHY
If echoes from the fitful past
Could rise to mental view,
Would all their fancied radiance last
Or would some odors from the blast,
Untouched by Time, accrue?
Is present pain a future bliss,
Or is it something worse?
For instance, take a case like this:
Is fancied kick a real kiss,
Or rather the reverse?
Is plenitude of passion palled
By poverty of scorn?
Does Fiction mend where Fact has mauled?
Has Death its wisest victims called
When idiots are born?
_Gelett Burgess_.
ABSTEMIA
_In Mystic_ Argot _often Confounded with Farrago_
If aught that stumbles in my speech
Or stutters in my pen,
Or, claiming tribute, each to each,
Rise, not to fall again,
Let something lowlier far, for me,
Through evanescent shades--
Than which my spirit might not be
Nourished in fitful ecstasy
Not less to know but more to see
Where that great Bliss pervades.
_Gelett Burgess_.
PSYCHOLOPHON
_Supposed to be Translated from the Old Parsee_
Twine then the rays
Round her soft Theban tissues!
All will be as She says,
When that dead past reissues.
Matters not what nor where,
Hark, to the moon's dim cluster!
How was her heavy hair
Lithe as a feather duster!
Matters not when nor whence;
Flittertigibbet!
Sounds make the song, not sense,
Thus I inhibit!
_Gelett Burgess_.
TIMON OF ARCHIMEDES
As one who cleaves the circumambient air
Seeking in azure what it lacks in space,
And sees a young and finely chiselled face
Filled with foretastes of wisdom yet more rare;
Touching and yet untouched--unmeasured grace!
A breathing credo and a living prayer--
Yet of the earth, still earthy; debonair
The while in heaven it seeketh for a place.
So thy dear eyes and thy kind lips but say--
Ere from his cerements Timon seems to flit:
"What of the reaper grim with sickle keen?"
And then the sunlight ushers in new day
And for our tasks our bodies seem more fit--
"Might of the night, unfleeing, sight unseen."
_Charles Battell Loomis_.
ALONE
Alone! Alone!
I sit in the solitudes of the moonshades,
Soul-hungering in the moonshade solitudes sit I--
My heart-lifts beaten down in the wild wind-path.
Oppressed, and scourged and beaten down are my heart-lifts.
I fix my gaze on the eye-star, and the eye-star flings its dart
upon me.
I wonder why my soul is lost in wonder why I am,
And why the eye-star mocks me,
Why the wild wind beats down my heart-lifts;
Why I am stricken here in the moonshade solitudes.
Oh! why am I what I am,
And why am I anything?
Am I not as wild as the wind and more crazy?
Why do I sit in the moonshade, while the eye-star mocks me while I
ask what I am?
Why? Why?
_Anonymous_.
LINES BY A MEDIUM
I might not, if I could;
I should not, if I might;
Yet if I should I would,
And, shoulding, I should quite!
I must not, yet I may;
I can, and still I must;
But ah! I cannot--nay,
To must I may not, just!
I shall, although I will,
But be it understood,
If I may, can, shall--still
I might, could, would, or should!
_Anonymous_.
TRANSCENDENTALISM
It is told, in Buddhi-theosophic schools,
There are rules,
By observing which, when mundane labor irks
One can simulate quiescence
By a timely evanescence
From his Active Mortal Essence,
(Or his Works.)
The particular procedure leaves research
In the lurch,
But, apparently, this matter-moulded form
Is a kind of outer plaster,
Which a well-instructed Master
Can remove without disaster
When he's warm.
And to such as mourn an Indian Solar Clime
At its prime
'Twere a thesis most immeasurably fit,
So expansively elastic,
And so plausibly fantastic,
That one gets enthusiastic
For a bit.
_From the Times of India_.
INDIFFERENCE
In loopy links the canker crawls,
Tads twiddle in their 'polian glee,
Yet sinks my heart as water falls.
The loon that laughs, the babe that bawls,
The wedding wear, the funeral palls,
Are neither here nor there to me.
Of life the mingled wine and brine
I sit and sip pipslipsily.
_Anonymous_.
HEART-FOAM
Oh! to be wafted away
From this black Aceldama of sorrow,
Where the dust of an earthy to-day
Makes the earth of a dusty to-morrow.
_W.S. Gilbert_.
COSSIMBAZAR
Come fleetly, come fleetly, my hookabadar,
For the sound of the tam-tam is heard from afar.
"Banoolah! Banoolah!" The Brahmins are nigh,
And the depths of the jungle re-echo their cry.
_Pestonjee Bomanjee_!
Smite the guitar;
Join in the chorus, my hookabadar.
Heed not the blast of the deadly monsoon,
Nor the blue Brahmaputra that gleams in the moon.
Stick to thy music, and oh, let the sound
Be heard with distinctness a mile or two round.
_Famsetjee, Feejeebhoy_!
Sweep the guitar.
Join in the chorus, my hookabadar.
Art thou a Buddhist, or dost thou indeed
Put faith in the monstrous Mohammedan creed?
Art thou a Ghebir--a blinded Parsee?
Not that it matters an atom to me.
_Cursetjee Bomanjee_!
Twang the guitar
Join in the chorus, my hookabadar.
_Henry S. Leigh_.
_THE PERSONIFIED SENTIMENTAL_
Affection's charm no longer gilds
The idol of the shrine;
But cold Oblivion seeks to fill
Regret's ambrosial wine.
Though Friendship's offering buried lies
'Neath cold Aversion's snow,
Regard and Faith will ever bloom
Perpetually below.
I see thee whirl in marble halls,
In Pleasure's giddy train,
Remorse is never on that brow,
Nor Sorrow's mark of pain.
Deceit has marked thee for her own;
Inconstancy the same;
And Ruin wildly sheds its gleam
Athwart thy path of shame.
_Bret Harte_.
A CLASSIC ODE
Oh, limpid stream of Tyrus, now I hear
The pulsing wings of Armageddon's host,
Clear as a colcothar and yet more clear--
(Twin orbs, like those of which the Parsees boast;)
Down in thy pebbled deeps in early spring
The dimpled naiads sport, as in the time
When Ocidelus with untiring wing
Drave teams of prancing tigers, 'mid the chime
Of all the bells of Phicol. Scarcely one
Peristome veils its beauties now, but then--
Like nascent diamonds, sparkling in the sun,
Or sainfoin, circinate, or moss in marshy fen.
Loud as the blasts of Tubal, loud and strong,
Sweet as the songs of Sappho, aye more sweet;
Long as the spear of Arnon, twice as long,
What time he hurled it at King Pharaoh's feet.
_Charles Battell Loomis_.
WHERE AVALANCHES WAIL
Where avalanches wail, and green Distress
Sweeps o'er the pallid beak of loveliness:
Where melancholy Sulphur holds her sway:
And cliffs of conscience tremble and obey;
And where Tartarean rattle snakes expire;
Twisting like tendrils of a hero's pyre?
No! dancing in the meteor's hall of power,
See, Genius ponders o'er Affection's tower!
A form of thund'ring import soars on high,
Hark! 'tis the gore of infant melody:
No more shall verdant Innocence amuse
The lips that death-fraught Indignation glues;--
Tempests shall teach the trackless tide of thought.
That undiminish'd senselessness is naught;
Freedom shall glare; and oh! ye links divine,
The Poet's heart shall quiver in the brine.
_Anonymous_
BLUE MOONSHINE
Mingled aye with fragrant yearnings,
Throbbing in the mellow glow,
Glint the silvery spirit-burnings,
Pearly blandishments of woe.
Aye! forever and forever,
Whilst the love-lorn censers sweep,
Whilst the jasper winds dissever
Amber-like the crystal deep,
Shall the soul's delirious slumber,
Sea-green vengeance of a kiss,
Teach despairing crags to number
Blue infinities of bliss.
_Francis G. Stokes_.
NONSENSE
Good reader, if you e'er have seen,
When Phoebus hastens to his pillow,
The mermaids with their tresses green
Dancing upon the western billow;
If you have seen at twilight dim,
When the lone spirit's vesper hymn
Floats wild along the winding shore,
The fairy train their ringlets weave
Glancing along the spangled green;--
If you have seen all this, and more,
God bless me! what a deal you've seen!
_Thomas Moore_.
SUPERIOR NONSENSE VERSES
He comes with herald clouds of dust;
Ecstatic frenzies rend his breast;
A moment, and he graced the earth--
Now, seek him at the eagle's nest.
Hark! see'st thou not the torrent's flash
Far shooting o'er the mountain height?
Hear'st not the billow's solemn roar,
That echoes through the vaults of night?
Anon the murky cloud is riven,
The lightnings leap in sportive play,
And through the clanging doors of heaven,
In calm effulgence bursts the day.
Hope, peering from her fleecy car,
Smiles welcome to the coming spring,
And birds with blithesome songs of praise
Make every grove and valley ring.
What though on pinions of the blast
The sea-gulls sweep with leaden flight?
What though the watery caverns deep
Gleam ghostly on the wandering sight?
Is there no music in the trees
To charm thee with its frolic mirth?
Must Care's wan phantom still beguile
And chain thee to the stubborn earth?
Lo! Fancy from her magic realm
Pours Boreal gleams adown the pole.
The tidal currents lift and swell--
Dead currents of the ocean's soul.
Yet never may their mystic streams
Breathe whispers of the mournful past,
Or Pallas wake her sounding lyre
Mid Ether's columned temples vast.
Grave History walks again the earth
As erst it did in days of eld,
When seated on the golden throne
Her hand a jewelled sceptre held.
The Delphian oracle is dumb,
Dread Cumae wafts no words of fate,
To fright the eager souls that press
Through sullen Lethe's iron gate.
But deeper shadows gather o'er
The vales that sever night and morn;
And darkness folds with brooding wing
The rustling fields of waving corn.
Then issuing from his bosky lair
The crafty tiger crouches low,
Or thunders from the frozen north
The white bear lapped in Arctic snow.
Thus shift the scenes till high aloft
The young moon sets her crescent horn,
And in gray evening's emerald sea
The beauteous Star of Love is born.
_Anonymous_.
WHEN MOONLIKE ORE THE HAZURE SEAS
When moonlike ore the hazure seas
In soft effulgence swells,
When silver jews and balmy breaze
Bend down the Lily's bells;
When calm and deap, the rosy sleap
Has lapt your soal in dreems,
R Hangeline! R lady mine!
Dost thou remember Jeames?
I mark thee in the Marble all,
Where England's loveliest shine--
I say the fairest of them hall
Is Lady Hangeline.
My soul, in desolate eclipse,
With recollection teems--
And then I hask, with weeping lips,
Dost thou remember Jeames?
Away! I may not tell thee hall
This soughring heart endures--
There is a lonely sperrit-call
That Sorrow never cures;
There is a little, little Star,
That still above me beams;
It is the Star of Hope--but ar!
Dost thou remember Jeames?
_W.M. Thackeray_.
LINES BY A PERSON OF QUALITY
Fluttering spread thy purple pinions,
Gentle Cupid, o'er my heart,
I a slave in thy dominions,
Nature must give way to art.
Mild Arcadians, ever blooming,
Nightly nodding o'er your flocks,
See my weary days consuming,
All beneath yon flowery rocks.
Thus the Cyprian goddess weeping,
Mourned Adonis, darling youth:
Him the boar, in silence creeping,
Gored with unrelenting tooth.
Cynthia, tune harmonious numbers;
Fair Discretion, tune the lyre;
Soothe my ever-waking slumbers;
Bright Apollo, lend thy choir.
Gloomy Pluto, king of terrors,
Armed in adamantine chains,
Lead me to the crystal mirrors,
Watering soft Elysian plains.
Mournful Cypress, verdant willow,
Gilding my Aurelia's brows,
Morpheus, hovering o'er my pillow,
Hear me pay my dying vows.
Melancholy, smooth Maeander,
Swiftly purling in a round,
On thy margin lovers wander
With thy flowery chaplets crowned.
Thus when Philomela, drooping,
Softly seeks her silent mate,
So the bird of Juno stooping;
Melody resigns to fate.
_Alexander Pope_.
FRANGIPANNI
Untwine those ringlets! Ev'ry dainty clasp
That shines like twisted sunlight in my eye
Is but the coiling of the jewelled asp
That smiles to see men die.
Oh, cobra-curlèd! Fierce-fanged fair one! Draw
Night's curtain o'er the landscape of thy hair!
I yield! I kneel! I own, I bless thy law
That dooms me to despair.
I mark the crimson ruby of thy lips,
I feel the witching weirdness of thy breath!
I droop! I sink into my soul's eclipse,--
I fall in love with death!
And yet, vouchsafe a moment! I would gaze
Once more into those sweetly-murderous eyes,
Soft glimmering athwart the pearly haze
That smites to dusk the skies.
Hast thou no pity? Must I darkly tread
The unknown paths that lead me wide from thee?
Hast thou no garland for this aching head
That soon so low must be?
No sound? No sigh? No smile? Is _all_ forgot?
Then spin my shroud out of that golden skein
Thou callst thy tresses! _I_ shall stay thee not--
My struggles were but vain!
But shall I see thee far beyond the sun,
When the new dawn lights Empyrean scenes?
What matters now? I know the poem's done,
And wonder what the dickens it all means!
_Anonymous_.
LINES BY A FOND LOVER
Lovely maid, with rapture swelling,
Should these pages meet thine eye,
Clouds of absence soft dispelling;--
Vacant memory heaves a sigh.
As the rose, with fragrance weeping,
Trembles to the tuneful wave,
So my heart shall twine unsleeping,
Till it canopies the grave.
Though another's smile's requited,
Envious fate my doom should be;
Joy forever disunited,
Think, ah! think, at times on me!
Oft, amid the spicy gloaming,
Where the brakes their songs instil,
Fond affection silent roaming,
Loves to linger by the rill--
There, when echo's voice consoling,
Hears the nightingale complain,
Gentle sighs my lips controlling,
Bind my soul in beauty's chain.
Oft in slumber's deep recesses,
I thy mirror'd image see;
Fancy mocks the vain caresses
I would lavish like a bee!
But how vain is glittering sadness!
Hark, I hear distraction's knell!
Torture gilds my heart with madness!
Now forever fare thee well!
_Anonymous_.
FORCING A WAY
How many strive to force a way
Where none can go save those who pay,
To verdant plains of soft delight
The homage of the silent night,
When countless stars from pole to pole
Around the earth unceasing roll
In roseate shadow's silvery hue,
Shine forth and gild the morning dew.
And must we really part for good,
But meet again here where we've stood?
No more delightful trysting-place,
We've watched sweet Nature's smiling face.
No more the landscape's lovely brow,
Exchange our mutual breathing vow.
Then should the twilight draw around
No loving interchange of sound.
Less for renown than innate love,
These to my wish must recreant prove;
Nor whilst an impulse here remain,
Can ever hope the soul to gain;
For memory scanning all the past,
Relaxes her firm bonds at last,
And gives to candor all the grace
The heart can in its temple trace.
_Anonymous_.
THY HEART
Thy heart is like some icy lake,
On whose cold brink I stand;
Oh, buckle on my spirit's skate,
And lead, thou living saint, the way
To where the ice is thin--
That it may break beneath my feet
And let a lover in!
_Anonymous_.
A LOVE-SONG BY A LUNATIC
There's not a spider in the sky,
There's not a glowworm in the sea,
There's not a crab that soars on high,
But bids me dream, dear maid, of thee!
When watery Phoebus ploughs the main,
When fiery Luna gilds the lea,
As flies run up the window-pane,
So fly my thoughts, dear love, to thee!
_Anonymous_.
THE PARTERRE
I don't know any greatest treat
As sit him in a gay parterre,
And sniff one up the perfume sweet
Of every roses buttoning there.
It only want my charming miss
Who make to blush the self red rose;
Oh! I have envy of to kiss
The end's tip of her splendid nose.
Oh! I have envy of to be
What grass 'neath her pantoffle push,
And too much happy seemeth me
The margaret which her vestige crush.
But I will meet her nose at nose,
And take occasion for her hairs,
And indicate her all my woes,
That she in fine agree my prayers.
THE ENVOY
I don't know any greatest treat
As sit him in a gay parterre,
With Madame who is too more sweet
Than every roses buttoning there.
_E.H. Palmer_
TO MOLLIDUSTA
When gooseberries grow on the stem of a daisy,
And plum-puddings roll on the tide to the shore,
And julep is made from the curls of a jazey,
Oh, then, Mollidusta, I'll love thee no more.
When steamboats no more on the Thames shall be going,
And a cast-iron bridge reach Vauxhall from the Nore,
And the Grand Junction waterworks cease to be flowing,
Oh, then, Mollidusta, I'll love thee no more.
_Planché_.
JOHN JONES
_At the Piano_
I
Love me and leave me; what love bids retrieve me? can June's fist
grasp May?
Leave me and love me; hopes eyed once above me like spring's
sprouts, decay;
Fall as the snow falls, when summer leaves grow false--cards
packed for storm's play!
II
Nay, say Decay's self be but last May's elf, wing shifted, eye
sheathed--
Changeling in April's crib rocked, who lets 'scape rills locked
fast since frost breathed--
Skin cast (think!) adder-like, now bloom bursts bladder-like,--
bloom frost bequeathed?
III
Ah, how can fear sit and hear as love hears it grief's heart's
cracked grate's screech?
Chance lets the gate sway that opens on hate's way and shews on
shame's beach
Crouched like an imp sly change watch sweet love's shrimps lie, a
toothful in each.
IV
Time feels his tooth slip on husks wet from Truth's lip, which
drops them and grins--
Shells where no throb stirs of life left in lobsters since joy
thrilled their fins--
Hues of the pawn's tail or comb that makes dawn stale, so red for
our sins!
V
Leaves love last year smelt now feel dead love's tears melt--flies
caught in time's mesh!
Salt are the dews in which new time breeds new sin, brews blood
and stews flesh;
Next year may see dead more germs than this weeded and reared them
afresh.
Old times left perish, new time to cherish; life just shifts its
tune;
As, when the day dies, half afraid, eyes the growth of the moon;
Love me and save me, take me or waive me; death takes one so soon!
_A.C. Swinburne_.
_THE OWL AND THE PUSSY-CAT_
The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat:
They took some honey, and plenty of money
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
"Oh, lovely Pussy, oh, Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!"
Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl,
How charmingly sweet you sing!
Oh, let us be married; too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?"
They sailed away for a year and a day,
To the land where the bong-tree grows;
And there in the wood a Piggy-wig stood,
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.
"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?" Said the Piggy, "I will."
So they took it away and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.
_Edward Lear_.
A BALLADE OF THE NURSERIE
She hid herself in the _soirée_ kettle
Out of her Ma's way, wise, wee maid!
Wan was her lip as the lily's petal,
Sad was the smile that over it played.
Why doth she warble not? Is she afraid
Of the hound that howls, or the moaning mole?
Can it be on an errand she hath delayed?
Hush thee, hush thee, dear little soul!
The nightingale sings to the nodding nettle
In the gloom o' the gloaming athwart the glade:
The zephyr sighs soft on Popòcatapètl,
And Auster is taking it cool in the shade:
Sing, hey, for a _gutta serenade_!
Not mine to stir up a storied pole,
No noses snip with a bluggy blade--
Hush thee, hush thee, dear little soul!
Shall I bribe with a store of minted metal?
With Everton toffee thee persuade?
That thou in a kettle thyself shouldst settle,
When grandly and gaudily all arrayed!
Thy flounces 'ill foul and fangles fade.
Come out, and Algernon Charles 'ill roll
Thee safe and snug in Plutonian plaid--
Hush thee, hush thee, dear little soul!
ENVOI
When nap is none and raiment frayed,
And winter crowns the puddered poll,
A kettle sings ane soote ballade--
Hush thee, hush thee, dear little soul.
_John Twig_.
_A BALLAD OF HIGH ENDEAVOR_
Ah Night! blind germ of days to be,
Ah me! ah me!
(Sweet Venus, mother!)
What wail of smitten strings hear we?
(Ah me! ah me!
_Hey diddle dee_!)
Ravished by clouds our Lady Moon,
Ah me! ah me!
(Sweet Venus, mother!)
Sinks swooning in a lady-swoon
(Ah me! ah me!
_Dum diddle dee_!)
What profits it to rise i' the dark?
Ah me! ah me!
(Sweet Venus, mother!)
If love but over-soar its mark
(Ah me! ah me!
_Hey diddle dee_!)
What boots to fall again forlorn?
Ah me! ah me!
(Sweet Venus, mother!)
Scorned by the grinning hound of scorn,
(Ah me! ah me!
_Dum diddle dee_!)
Art thou not greater who art less?
Ah me! ah me!
(Sweet Venus, mother!)
Low love fulfilled of low success?
(Ah me! ah me!
_Hey diddle dee_!)
_Anonymous_.
THE LUGUBRIOUS WHING-WHANG
Out on the margin of moonshine land,
Tickle me, love, in these lonesome ribs,
Out where the whing-whang loves to stand,
Writing his name with his tail on the sand,
And wiping it out with his oogerish hand;
Tickle me, love, in these lonesome ribs.
Is it the gibber of gungs and keeks?
Tickle me, love, in these lonesome ribs,
Or what _is_ the sound the whing-whang seeks,
Crouching low by the winding creeks,
And holding his breath for weeks and weeks?
Tickle me, love, in these lonesome ribs.
Aroint him the wraithest of wraithly things!
Tickle me, love, in these lonesome ribs,
'Tis a fair whing-whangess with phosphor rings,
And bridal jewels of fangs and stings,
_James W. Riley_
OH! WEARY MOTHER
The lilies lie in my lady's bower,
(Oh! weary mother, drive the cows to roost;)
They faintly droop for a little hour;
My lady's head droops like a flower.
She took the porcelain in her hand,
(Oh! weary mother, drive the cows to roost;)
She poured; I drank at her command;
Drank deep, and now--you understand!
(Oh! weary mother, drive the cows to roost.)
_Barry Pain_.
SWISS AIR
I'm a gay tra, la, la,
With my fal, lal, la, la,
And my bright--
And my light--
Tra, la, le. [_Repeat_.]
Then laugh, ha, ha, ha,
And ring, ting, ling, ling,
And sing, fal, la, la,
La, la, le. [_Repeat_.]
_Bret Harte_.
_THE BULBUL_
The bulbul hummeth like a book
Upon the pooh-pooh tree,
And now and then he takes a look
At you and me,
At me and you.
Kuchi!
Kuchoo!
_Owen Seaman_.
_BALLAD_
_With an Ancient Refrain_
O stoodent A has gone and spent,
With a hey-lililu and a how-low-lan
All his money to a Cent,
And the birk and the broom blooms bonny.
His Creditors he could not pay,
With a hey-lililu and a how-low-lan,
And Prison proved a shock to A,
And the birk and the broom blooms bonny.
_Anonymous_.
OH, MY GERALDINE
Oh, my Geraldine,
No flow'r was ever seen so toodle um.
You are my lum ti toodle lay,
Pretty, pretty queen,
Is rum ti Geraldine and something teen,
More sweet than tiddle lum in May.
Like the star so bright
That somethings all the night,
My Geraldine!
You're fair as the rum ti lum ti sheen,
Hark! there is what--ho!
From something--um, you know,
Dear, what I mean.
Oh! rum! tum!! tum!!! my Geraldine.
_F.C. Burnand_.
BUZ, QUOTH THE BLUE FLY
Buz, quoth the blue fly,
Hum, quoth the bee,
Buz and hum they cry,
And so do we:
In his ear, in his nose, thus, do you see?
He ate the dormouse, else it was he.
_Ben Jonson
in "The Masque of Oberon_."
A SONG ON KING WILLIAM III
As I walked by myself,
And talked to myself,
Myself said unto me,
Look to thyself,
Take care of thyself,
For nobody cares for thee.
I answered myself,
And said to myself,
In the self-same repartee,
Look to thyself,
Or not look to thyself,
The selfsame thing will be.
_Anonymous_.
THERE WAS A MONKEY
There was a monkey climbed up a tree,
When he fell down, then down fell he.
There was a crow sat on a stone,
When he was gone, then there was none.
There was an old wife did eat an apple,
When she had eat two, she had eat a couple.
There was a horse going to the mill,
When he went on, he stood not still.
There was a butcher cut his thumb,
When it did bleed, then blood did come.
There was a lackey ran a race,
When he ran fast, he ran apace.
There was a cobbler clouting shoon,
When they were mended, they were done.
There was a chandler making candle,
When he them strip, he did them handle.
There was a navy went into Spain,
When it returned, it came again.
_Anonymous, 1626_.
THE GUINEA PIG
There was a little Guinea-pig,
Who, being little, was not big;
He always walked upon his feet,
And never fasted when he eat.
When from a place he ran away,
He never at that place did stay;
And while he ran, as I am told,
He ne'er stood still for young or old.
He often squeaked, and sometimes vi'lent,
And when he squeaked he ne'er was silent:
Though ne'er instructed by a cat,
He knew a mouse was not a rat.
One day, as I am certified,
He took a whim, and fairly died;
And as I'm told by men of sense,
He never has been living since!
_Anonymous_.
THREE CHILDREN
Three children sliding on the ice
Upon a summer's day,
As it fell out they all fell in,
The rest they ran away.
Now, had these children been at home,
Or sliding on dry ground,
Ten thousand pounds to one penny
They had not all been drowned.
You parents all that children have,
And you too that have none,
If you would have them safe abroad
Pray keep them safe at home.
_London, 1662_
_IF_
If all the land were apple-pie,
And all the sea were ink;
And all the trees were bread and cheese,
What should we do for drink?
_Anonymous_.
_A RIDDLE_
The man in the wilderness asked of me
How many strawberries grew in the sea.
I answered him as I thought good,
As many as red herrings grow in the wood.
_Anonymous_.
_THREE JOVIAL HUNTSMEN_
There were three jovial huntsmen,
As I have heard them say,
And they would go a-hunting
All on a summer's day.
All the day they hunted,
And nothing could they find
But a ship a-sailing,
A-sailing with the wind.
One said it was a ship,
The other said Nay;
The third said it was a house
With the chimney blown away.
And all the night they hunted,
And nothing could they find;
But the moon a-gliding,
A-gliding with the wind.
One said it was the moon,
The other said Nay;
The third said it was a cheese,
And half o't cut away.
_Anonymous_.
THREE ACRES OF LAND
My father left me three acres of land,
Sing ivy, sing ivy;
My father left me three acres of land,
Sing holly, go whistle, and ivy!
I ploughed it with a ram's horn,
Sing ivy, sing ivy;
And sowed it all over with one peppercorn.
Sing holly, go whistle, and ivy!
I harrowed it with a bramble bush,
Sing ivy, sing ivy;
And reaped it with my little penknife,
Sing holly, go whistle, and ivy!
I got the mice to carry it to the barn,
Sing ivy, sing ivy;
And thrashed it with a goose's quill,
Sing holly, go whistle, and ivy!
I got the cat to carry it to the mill,
Sing ivy, sing ivy;
The miller he swore he would have her paw,
And the cat she swore she would scratch his face,
Sing holly, go whistle, and ivy!
_Anonymous_.
MASTER AND MAN
Master I have, and I am his man,
Gallop a dreary dun;
Master I have, and I am his man,
And I'll get a wife as fast as I can;
With a heighly gaily gamberally,
Higgledy piggledy, niggledy, niggledy,
Gallop a dreary dun.
_Anonymous_.
HYDER IDDLE
Hyder iddle diddle dell,
A yard of pudding is not an ell;
Not forgetting tweedle-dye,
A tailor's goose will never fly.
_Anonymous_.
KING ARTHUR
When good King Arthur ruled the land,
He was a goodly king:
He stole three pecks of barley meal,
To make a bag-pudding.
A bag-pudding the king did make,
And stuffed it well with plums;
And in it put great lumps of fat,
As big as my two thumbs.
The king and queen did eat thereof,
And noblemen beside;
And what they could not eat that night,
The queen next morning fried.
_Anonymous_.
IN THE DUMPS
We're all in the dumps,
For diamonds are trumps;
The kittens are gone to St. Paul's!
The babies are bit,
The moon's in a fit,
And the houses are built without walls.
_Anonymous_.
TWEEDLE-DUM AND TWEEDLE-DEE
Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee
Resolved to have a battle,
For Tweedle-dum said Tweedle-dee
Had spoiled his nice new rattle.
Just then flew by a monstrous crow,
As big as a tar-barrel,
Which frightened both the heroes so
They quite forgot their quarrel.
_Anonymous_.
MARTIN TO HIS MAN
Martin said to his man,
Fie! man, fie!
Oh, Martin said to his man,
Who's the fool now?
Martin said to his man,
Fill thou the cup, and I the can;
Thou hast well drunken, man:
Who's the fool now?
I see a sheep shearing corn,
Fie! man, fie!
I see a sheep shearing corn,
Who's the fool now?
I see a sheep shearing corn,
And a cuckoo blow his horn;
Thou hast well drunken, man:
Who's the fool now?
I see a man in the moon,
Fie! man, fie!
I see a man in the moon,
Who's the fool now?
I see a man in the moon,
Clouting of St. Peter's shoon,
Thou hast well drunken, man:
Who's the fool now?
I see a hare chase a hound,
Fie! man, fie!
I see a hare chase a hound,
Who's the fool now?
I see a hare chase a hound,
Twenty mile above the ground;
Thou hast well drunken, man:
Who's the fool now?
I see a goose ring a hog,
Fie! man, fie!
I see a goose ring a hog,
Who's the fool now?
I see a goose ring a hog,
And a snail that bit a dog;
Thou hast well drunken, man:
Who's the fool now?
I see a mouse catch the cat,
Fie! man, fie!
I see a mouse catch the cat,
Who's the fool now?
I see a mouse catch the cat,
And the cheese to eat the rat;
Thou hast well drunken, man:
Who's the fool now?
From _Deuteromelia
printed in the reign of James I_.
_THE YONGHY-BONGHY-BO_
I
On the Coast of Coromandel
Where the early pumpkins blow,
In the middle of the woods
Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
Two old chairs, and half a candle,
One old jug without a handle,--
These were all his worldly goods:
In the middle of the woods,
These were all the worldly goods
Of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,
Of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
II
Once, among the Bong-trees walking
Where the early pumpkins blow,
To a little heap of stones
Came the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
There he heard a Lady talking,
To some milk-white Hens of Dorking,--
"'Tis the Lady Jingly Jones!
On that little heap of stones
Sits the Lady Jingly Jones!"
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
III
"Lady Jingly! Lady Jingly!
Sitting where the pumpkins blow,
Will you come and be my wife?"
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,
"I am tired of living singly,--
On this coast so wild and shingly,--
I'm a-weary of my life;
If you'll come and be my wife,
Quite serene would be my life!"
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
IV
"On this Coast of Coromandel
Shrimps and watercresses grow,
Prawns are plentiful and cheap,"
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
"You shall have my chairs and candle,
And my jug without a handle!
Gaze upon the rolling deep
(Fish is plentiful and cheap):
As the sea, my love is deep!"
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
Lady Jingly answered sadly,
And her tears began to flow,--
"Your proposal comes too late,
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
I would be your wife most gladly!"
(Here she twirled her fingers madly,)
"But in England I've a mate!
Yes! you've asked me far too late,
For in England I've a mate,
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!"
VI
Mr. Jones (his name is Handel,--
Handel Jones, Esquire & Co.)
Dorking fowls delights to send,
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
Keep, oh, keep your chairs and candle,
And your jug without a handle,--
I can merely be your friend!
Should my Jones more Dorkings send,
I will give you three, my friend!
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
VII
"Though you've such a tiny body,
And your head so large doth grow,--
Though your hat may blow away,
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
Though you're such a Hoddy Doddy,
Yet I wish that I could modi-
fy the words I needs must say!
Will you please to go away?
That is all I have to say,
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!"
VIII
Down the slippery slopes of Myrtle,
Where the early pumpkins blow,
To the calm and silent sea
Fled the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
There, beyond the Bay of Gurtle,
Lay a large and lively Turtle.
"You're the Cove," he said, "for me:
On your back beyond the sea,
Turtle, you shall carry me!"
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
IX
Through the silent roaring ocean
Did the Turtle swiftly go;
Holding fast upon his shell
Rode the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
With a sad primaeval motion
Toward the sunset isles of Boshen
Still the Turtle bore him well,
Holding fast upon his shell.
"Lady Jingly Jones, farewell!"
Sang the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,
Sang the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
X
From the Coast of Coromandel
Did that Lady never go,
On that heap of stones she mourns
For the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
On that Coast of Coromandel,
In his jug without a handle
Still she weeps, and daily moans;
On the little heap of stones
To her Dorking Hens she moans,
For the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,
For the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
_Edward Lear_.
_THE POBBLE WHO HAS NO TOES_
The Pobble who has no toes
Had once as many as we;
When they said, "Some day you may lose them all,"
He replied, "Fish fiddle de-dee!"
And his Aunt Jobiska made him drink
Lavender water tinged with pink;
For she said, "The World in general knows
There's nothing so good for a Pobble's toes!"
The Pobble who has no toes
Swam across the Bristol Channel;
But before he set out he wrapped his nose
In a piece of scarlet flannel.
For his Aunt Jobiska said, "No harm
Can come to his toes if his nose is warm;
And it's perfectly known that a Pobble's toes
Are safe--provided he minds his nose."
The Pobble swam fast and well,
And when boats or ships came near him,
He tinkledy-binkledy-winkled a bell
So that all the world could hear him.
And all the Sailors and Admirals cried,
When they saw him nearing the farther side,
"He has gone to fish for his Aunt Jobiska's
Runcible Cat with crimson whiskers!"
But before he touched the shore--
The shore of the Bristol Channel,
A sea-green Porpoise carried away
His wrapper of scarlet flannel.
And when he came to observe his feet,
Formerly garnished with toes so neat,
His face at once became forlorn
On perceiving that all his toes were gone!
And nobody ever knew,
From that dark day to the present,
Whoso had taken the Pobble's toes,
In a manner so far from pleasant.
Whether the shrimps or crawfish gray,
Or crafty mermaids stole them away,
Nobody knew; and nobody knows
How the Pobble was robbed of his twice five toes!
The Pobble who has no toes
Was placed in a friendly Bark,
And they rowed him back and carried him up
To his Aunt Jobiska's Park.
And she made him a feast at his earnest wish,
Of eggs and buttercups fried with fish;
And she said, "It's a fact the whole world knows,
That Pobbles are happier without their toes."
_Edward Lear_.
THE JUMBLIES
I
They went to sea in a sieve, they did;
In a sieve they went to sea:
In spite of all their friends could say,
On a winter's morn, on a stormy day,
In a sieve they went to sea.
And when the sieve turned round and round,
And every one cried, "You'll all be drowned!"
They called aloud, "Our sieve ain't big;
But we don't care a button, we don't care a fig:
In a sieve we'll go to sea!"
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green and their hands are blue;
And they went to sea in a sieve.
II
They sailed away in a sieve, they did,
In a sieve they sailed so fast,
With only a beautiful pea-green veil
Tied with a ribbon by way of a sail,
To a small tobacco-pipe mast.
And every one said who saw them go,
"Oh! won't they soon be upset, you know?
For the sky is dark and the voyage is long,
And, happen what may, it's extremely wrong
In a sieve to sail so fast."
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green and their hands are blue;
And they went to sea in a sieve.
III
The water it soon came in, it did;
The water it soon came in:
So, to keep them dry, they wrapped their feet
In a pinky paper all folded neat;
And they fastened it down with a pin.
And they passed the night in a crockery-jar;
And each of them said, "How wise we are!
Though the sky be dark, and the voyage be long,
Yet we never can think we were rash or wrong,
While round in our sieve we spin."
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green and their hands are blue;
And they went to sea in a sieve.
IV
And all night long they sailed away;
And when the sun went down,
They whistled and warbled a moony song
To the echoing sound of a coppery gong,
In the shade of the mountains brown.
"O Timballoo! How happy we are
When we live in a sieve and a crockery-jar!
And all night long, in the moonlight pale,
We sail away with a pea-green sail
In the shade of the mountains brown."
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue;
And they went to sea in a sieve.
V
They sailed to the Western Sea, they did,--
To a land all covered with trees;
And they bought an owl and a useful cart,
And a pound of rice, and a cranberry-tart,
And a hive of silvery bees;
And they bought a pig, and some green jackdaws,
And a lovely monkey with lollipop paws,
And forty bottles of ring-bo-ree,
And no end of Stilton cheese.
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue;
And they went to sea in a sieve.
VI
And in twenty years they all came back,--
In twenty years or more;
And every one said, "How tall they've grown!
For they've been to the Lakes, and the Torrible Zone,
And the hills of the Chankly Bore."
And they drank their health, and gave them a feast
Of dumplings made of beautiful yeast;
And every one said, "If we only live,
We, too, will go to sea in a sieve,
To the hills of the Chankly Bore."
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue;
And they went to sea in a sieve.
_Edward Lear_.
INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF MY UNCLE ARLY
I
Oh! my aged Uncle Arly,
Sitting on a heap of barley
Through the silent hours of night,
Close beside a leafy thicket;
On his nose there was a cricket,
In his hat a Railway-Ticket,
(But his shoes were far too tight.)
II
Long ago, in youth, he squander'd
All his goods away, and wander'd
To the Timskoop-hills afar.
There on golden sunsets glazing
Every evening found him gazing,
Singing, "Orb! you're quite amazing!
How I wonder what you are!"
III
Like the ancient Medes and Persians,
Always by his own exertions
He subsisted on those hills;
Whiles, by teaching children spelling,
Or at times by merely yelling,
Or at intervals by selling
"Propter's Nicodemus Pills."
IV
Later, in his morning rambles,
He perceived the moving brambles
Something square and white disclose:--
'Twas a First-class Railway-Ticket;
But on stooping down to pick it
Off the ground, a pea-green cricket
Settled on my uncle's nose.
V
Never, nevermore, oh! never
Did that cricket leave him ever,--
Dawn or evening, day or night;
Clinging as a constant treasure,
Chirping with a cheerious measure,
Wholly to my uncle's pleasure,
(Though his shoes were far too tight.)
VI
So for three and forty winters,
Till his shoes were worn to splinters
All those hills he wander'd o'er,--
Sometimes silent, sometimes yelling;
Till he came to Borley-Melling,
Near his old ancestral dwelling,
(But his shoes were far too tight.)
VII
On a little heap of barley
Died my aged Uncle Arly,
And they buried him one night
Close beside the leafy thicket;
There, his hat and Railway-Ticket;
There, his ever faithful cricket;
(But his shoes were far too tight.)
_Edward Lear_.
LINES TO A YOUNG LADY
How pleasant to know Mr. Lear!
Who has written such volumes of stuff!
Some think him ill-tempered and queer,
But a few think him pleasant enough.
His mind is concrete and fastidious,
His nose is remarkably big;
His visage is more or less hideous,
His beard it resembles a wig.
He has ears, and two eyes, and ten fingers,
Leastways if you reckon two thumbs;
Long ago he was one of the singers,
But now he is one of the dumbs.
He sits in a beautiful parlour,
With hundreds of books on the wall;
He drinks a great deal of Marsala,
But never gets tipsy at all.
He has many friends, laymen and clerical,
Old Foss is the name of his cat:
His body is perfectly spherical,
He weareth a runcible hat.
When he walks in a waterproof white,
The children run after him so!
Calling out, "He's come out in his night-
Gown, that crazy old Englishman, oh!"
He weeps by the side of the ocean,
He weeps on the top of the hill;
He purchases pancakes and lotion,
And chocolate shrimps from the mill.
He reads but he cannot speak Spanish,
He cannot abide ginger-beer:
Ere the days of his pilgrimage vanish,
How pleasant to know Mr. Lear.
_Edward Lear_.
WAYS AND MEANS
I'll tell thee everything I can;
There's little to relate.
I saw an aged aged man,
A-sitting on a gate.
"Who are you, aged man?" I said,
"And how is it you live?"
His answer trickled through my head
Like water through a sieve.
He said, "I look for butterflies
That sleep among the wheat:
I make them into mutton-pies,
And sell them in the street.
I sell them unto men," he said,
"Who sail on stormy seas;
And that's the way I get my bread--
A trifle, if you please."
But I was thinking of a plan
To dye one's whiskers green,
And always use so large a fan
That they could not be seen.
So, having no reply to give
To what the old man said,
I cried, "Come, tell me how you live!"
And thumped him on the head.
His accents mild took up the tale;
He said, "I go my ways
And when I find a mountain-rill
I set it in a blaze;
And thence they make a stuff they call
Rowland's Macassar Oil--
Yet twopence-halfpenny is all
They give me for my toil."
But I was thinking of a way
To feed oneself on batter,
And so go on from day to day
Getting a little fatter.
I shook him well from side to side,
Until his face was blue;
"Come, tell me how you live," I cried,
"And what it is you do!"
He said, "I hunt for haddock's eyes
Among the heather bright,
And work them into waistcoat-buttons
In the silent night.
And these I do not sell for gold
Or coin of silvery shine,
But for a copper halfpenny
And that will purchase nine."
"I sometimes dig for buttered rolls,
Or set limed twigs for crabs;
I sometimes search the grassy knolls
For wheels of Hansom cabs.
And that's the way" (he gave a wink)
"By which I get my wealth--
And very gladly will I drink
Your Honor's noble health."
I heard him then, for I had just
Completed my design
To keep the Menai Bridge from rust
By boiling it in wine.
I thanked him much for telling me
The way he got his wealth,
But chiefly for his wish that he
Might drink my noble health.
And now if e'er by chance I put
My fingers into glue,
Or madly squeeze a right-hand foot
Into a left-hand shoe,
Or if I drop upon my toe
A very heavy weight,
I weep, for it reminds me so
Of that old man I used to know--
Whose look was mild, whose speech was slow,
Whose hair was whiter than the snow,
Whose face was very like a crow,
With eyes, like cinders, all aglow,
Who seemed distracted with his woe,
Who rocked his body to and fro,
And muttered mumblingly, and low,
As if his mouth were full of dough,
Who snorted like a buffalo--
That summer evening, long ago,
A-sitting on a gate.
_Lewis Carroll_
THE WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER
The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright--
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done--
"It's very rude of him," she said,
"To come and spoil the fun!"
The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead--
There were no birds to fly.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
"If this were only cleared away,"
They said, "it would be grand!"
"If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.
"O Oysters come and walk with us!"
The Walrus did beseech.
"A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach:
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each."
The eldest Oyster looked at him,
But not a word he said:
The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head--
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the oyster-bed.
But four young Oysters hurried up,
All eager for the treat:
Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat--
And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn't any feet.
Four other Oysters followed them,
And yet another four;
And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, and more--
All hopping through the frothy waves,
And scrambling to the shore.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
Conveniently low:
And all the little Oysters stood
And waited in a row.
"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
"But wait a bit," the Oysters cried,
"Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!"
"No hurry!" said the Carpenter,
They thanked him much for that.
"A loaf of bread," the Walrus said,
"Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed--
Now if you 're ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed."
"But not on us!" the Oysters cried,
Turning a little blue.
"After such kindness that would be
A dismal thing to do!"
"The night is fine," the Walrus said,
"Do you admire the view?"
"It was so kind of you to come!
And you are very nice!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"Cut us another slice:
I wish you were not quite so deaf--
I've had to ask you twice!"
"It seems a shame," the Walrus said,
"To play them such a trick,
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"The butter's spread too thick!"
"I weep for you," the Walrus said;
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.
"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?"
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.
_Lewis Carroll_.
THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK
We have sailed many months, we have sailed many weeks,
(Four weeks to the month you may mark),
But never as yet ('tis your Captain who speaks)
Have we caught the least glimpse of a Snark!
"We have sailed many weeks, we have sailed many days,
(Seven days to the week I allow),
But a Snark, on the which we might lovingly gaze,
We have never beheld until now!"
"Come, listen, my men, while I tell you again
The five unmistakable marks
By which you may know, wheresoever you go,
The warranted genuine Snarks."
"Let us take them in order. The first is the taste,
Which is meagre and hollow, but crisp:
Like a coat that is rather too tight in the waist,
With a flavour of Will-o-the-wisp."
"Its habit of getting up late you'll agree
That it carries too far, when I say
That it frequently breakfasts at five-o'clock tea,
And dines on the following day."
"The third is its slowness in taking a jest.
Should you happen to venture on one,
It will sigh like a thing that is greatly distressed;
And it always looks grave at a pun."
"The fourth is its fondness for bathing-machines,
Which it constantly carries about,
And believes that they add to the beauty of scenes--
A sentiment open to doubt."
"The fifth is ambition. It next will be right
To describe each particular batch;
Distinguishing those that have feathers, and bite,
From those that have whiskers, and scratch."
"For, although common Snarks do no manner of harm,
Yet I feel it my duty to say
Some are Boojums--" The Bellman broke off in alarm,
For the Baker had fainted away.
They roused him with muffins--they roused him with ice--
They roused him with mustard and cress--
They roused him with jam and judicious advice--
They set him conundrums to guess.
When at length he sat up and was able to speak,
His sad story he offered to tell;
And the Bellman cried, "Silence! Not even a shriek!"
And excitedly tingled his bell.
"My father and mother were honest, though poor--"
"Skip all that!" cried the Bellman in haste,
"If it once becomes dark, there's no chance of a Snark,
We have hardly a minute to waste!"
"I skip forty years," said the Baker, in tears,
"And proceed without further remark
To the day when you took me aboard of your ship
To help you in hunting the Snark."
"You may seek it with thimbles--and seek it with care;
You may hunt it with forks and hope;
You may threaten its life with a railway-share;
You may charm it with smiles and soap--"
"I said it in Hebrew--I said it in Dutch--
I said it in German and Greek;
But I wholly forgot (and it vexes me much)
That English is what you speak!"
"The thing can be done," said the Butcher, "I think
The thing must be done, I am sure.
The thing shall be done! Bring me paper and ink,
The best there is time to procure."
So engrossed was the Butcher, he heeded them not,
As he wrote with a pen in each hand,
And explained all the while in a popular style
Which the Beaver could well understand.
"Taking Three as the subject to reason about--
A convenient number to state--
We add Seven and Ten and then multiply out
By One Thousand diminished by Eight."
"The result we proceed to divide, as you see,
By Nine Hundred and Ninety and Two;
Then subtract Seventeen, and the answer must be
Exactly and perfectly true."
"As to temper, the Jubjub's a desperate bird,
Since it lives in perpetual passion:
Its taste in costume is entirely absurd--
It is ages ahead of the fashion."
"Its flavor when cooked is more exquisite far
Than mutton or oysters or eggs:
(Some think it keeps best in an ivory jar,
And some, in mahogany kegs.)"
"You boil it in sawdust; you salt it in glue:
You condense it with locusts and tape;
Still keeping one principal object in view--
To preserve its symmetrical shape."
The Butcher would gladly have talked till next day,
But he felt that the Lesson must end,
And he wept with delight in attempting to say
He considered the Beaver his friend.
_Lewis Carroll_.
_SYLVIE AND BRUNO_
He thought he saw a Banker's clerk
Descending from the 'bus;
He looked again, and found it was
A Hippopotamus.
"If this should stay to dine," he said,
"There won't be much for us!"
He thought he saw an Albatross
That fluttered round the lamp:
He looked again, and found it was
A Penny-Postage-Stamp.
"You'd best be getting home," he said;
"The nights are very damp!"
He thought he saw a Coach-and-Four
That stood beside his bed:
He looked again, and found it was
A Bear without a Head.
"Poor thing," he said, "poor silly thing!
It's waiting to be fed!"
He thought he saw a Kangaroo
That worked a coffee-mill:
He looked again, and found it was
A Vegetable-Pill.
"Were I to swallow this," he said,
"I should be very ill!"
He thought he saw a Rattlesnake
That questioned him in Greek:
He looked again, and found it was
The Middle of Next Week.
"The one thing I regret," he said,
"Is that it cannot speak!"
_Lewis Carroll_.
GENTLE ALICE BROWN
It was a robber's daughter, and her name was Alice Brown.
Her father was the terror of a small Italian town;
Her mother was a foolish, weak, but amiable old thing;
But it isn't of her parents that I'm going for to sing.
As Alice was a-sitting at her window-sill one day,
A beautiful young gentleman he chanced to pass that way;
She cast her eyes upon him, and he looked so good and true,
That she thought, "I could be happy with a gentleman like you!"
And every morning passed her house that cream of gentlemen,
She knew she might expect him at a quarter unto ten,
A sorter in the Custom-house, it was his daily road
(The Custom-house was fifteen minutes' walk from her abode.)
But Alice was a pious girl, who knew it wasn't wise
To look at strange young sorters with expressive purple eyes;
So she sought the village priest to whom her family confessed,
The priest by whom their little sins were carefully assessed.
"Oh, holy father," Alice said, "'twould grieve you, would it not?
To discover that I was a most disreputable lot!
Of all unhappy sinners I'm the most unhappy one!"
The padre said, "Whatever have you been and gone and done?"
"I have helped mamma to steal a little kiddy from its dad,
I've assisted dear papa in cutting up a little lad.
I've planned a little burglary and forged a little check,
And slain a little baby for the coral on its neck!"
The worthy pastor heaved a sigh, and dropped a silent tear--
And said, "You mustn't judge yourself too heavily, my dear--
It's wrong to murder babies, little corals for to fleece;
But sins like these one expiates at half-a-crown apiece."
"Girls will be girls--you're very young, and flighty in your mind;
Old heads upon young shoulders we must not expect to find:
We mustn't be too hard upon these little girlish tricks--
Let's see--five crimes at half-a-crown--exactly twelve-and-six."
"Oh, father," little Alice cried, "your kindness makes me weep,
You do these little things for me so singularly cheap--
Your thoughtful liberality I never can forget;
But O there is another crime I haven't mentioned yet!"
"A pleasant-looking gentleman, with pretty purple eyes,
I've noticed at my window, as I've sat a-catching flies;
He passes by it every day as certain as can be--
I blush to say I've winked at him and he has winked at me!"
"For shame," said Father Paul, "my erring daughter! On my word
This is the most distressing news that I have ever heard.
Why, naughty girl, your excellent papa has pledged your hand
To a promising young robber, the lieutenant of his band!"
"This dreadful piece of news will pain your worthy parents so!
They are the most remunerative customers I know;
For many many years they've kept starvation from my doors,
I never knew so criminal a family as yours!"
"The common country folk in this insipid neighborhood
Have nothing to confess, they're so ridiculously good;
And if you marry any one respectable at all,
Why, you'll reform, and what will then become of Father Paul?"
The worthy priest, he up and drew his cowl upon his crown,
And started off in haste to tell the news to Robber Brown;
To tell him how his daughter, who now was for marriage fit,
Had winked upon a sorter, who reciprocated it.
Good Robber Brown, he muffled up his anger pretty well,
He said, "I have a notion, and that notion I will tell;
I will nab this gay young sorter, terrify him into fits,
And get my gentle wife to chop him into little bits."
"I've studied human nature, and I know a thing or two,
Though a girl may fondly love a living gent, as many do--
A feeling of disgust upon her senses there will fall
When she looks upon his body chopped particularly small."
He traced that gallant sorter to a still suburban square;
He watched his opportunity and seized him unaware;
He took a life-preserver and he hit him on the head,
And Mrs. Brown dissected him before she went to bed.
And pretty little Alice grew more settled in her mind,
She nevermore was guilty of a weakness of the kind,
Until at length good Robber Brown bestowed her pretty hand
On the promising young robber, the lieutenant of his band.
_W.S. Gilbert_.
THE STORY OF PRINCE AGIB
Strike the concertina's melancholy string!
Blow the spirit-stirring harp like any thing!
Let the piano's martial blast
Rouse the Echoes of the Past,
For of Agib, Prince of Tartary, I sing!
Of Agib, who amid Tartaric scenes,
Wrote a lot of ballet-music in his teens:
His gentle spirit rolls
In the melody of souls--
Which is pretty, but I don't know what it means
Of Agib, who could readily, at sight,
Strum a march upon the loud Theodolite:
He would diligently play
On the Zoetrope all day,
And blow the gay Pantechnicon all night.
One winter--I am shaky in my dates--
Came two starving minstrels to his gates,
Oh, Allah be obeyed,
How infernally they played!
I remember that they called themselves the "Oiiaits."
Oh! that day of sorrow, misery, and rage,
I shall carry to the Catacombs of Age,
Photographically lined
On the tablet of my mind,
When a yesterday has faded from its page!
Alas! Prince Agib went and asked them in!
Gave them beer, and eggs, and sweets, and scents, and tin.
And when (as snobs would say)
They "put it all away,"
He requested them to tune up and begin.
Though its icy horror chill you to the core,
I will tell you what I never told before,
The consequences true
Of that awful interview,
_For I listened at the key-hole in the door_!
They played him a sonata--let me see!
"_Medulla oblongata_"--key of G.
Then they began to sing
That extremely lovely thing,
"Scherzando! ma non troppo, ppp."
He gave them money, more than they could count,
Scent, from a most ingenious little fount,
More beer, in little kegs,
Many dozen hard-boiled eggs,
And goodies to a fabulous amount.
Now follows the dim horror of my tale,
And I feel I'm growing gradually pale,
For, even at this day,
Though its sting has passed away,
When I venture to remember it, I quail!
The elder of the brothers gave a squeal,
All-overish it made me for to feel!
"Oh Prince," he says, says he,
"_If a Prince indeed you be_,
I've a mystery I'm going to reveal!"
"Oh, listen, if you'd shun a horrid death,
To what the gent who's speaking to you, saith:
No 'Oiiaits' in truth are we,
As you fancy that we be,
For (ter-remble) I am Aleck--this is Beth!"
Said Agib, "Oh! accursed of your kind,
I have heard that you are men of evil mind!"
Beth gave a dreadful shriek--
But before he'd time to speak
I was mercilessly collared from behind.
In number ten or twelve or even more,
They fastened me, full length upon the floor.
On my face extended flat
I was walloped with a cat
For listening at the key-hole of the door.
Oh! the horror of that agonizing thrill!
(I can feel the place in frosty weather still).
For a week from ten to four
I was fastened to the floor,
While a mercenary wopped me with a will!
They branded me, and broke me on a wheel,
And they left me in an hospital to heal;
And, upon my solemn word,
I have never never heard
What those Tartars had determined to reveal.
But that day of sorrow, misery, and rage,
I shall carry to the Catacombs of Age,
Photographically lined
On the tablet of my mind,
When a yesterday has faded from its page!
_W.S. Gilbert_.
FERDINANDO AND ELVIRA, OR THE GENTLE PIEMAN
* * * * *
"Love you?" said I, then I sighed, and then I gazed upon her
sweetly--
For I think I do this sort of thing particularly neatly--
"Tell me whither I may his me, tell me, dear one, that I may know--
Is it up the highest Andes? down a horrible volcano?"
But she said, "It isn't polar bears, or hot volcanic grottoes,
Only find out who it is that writes those lovely cracker mottoes."
Seven weary years I wandered--Patagonia, China, Norway,
Till at last I sank exhausted, at a pastrycook his doorway.
And he chirped and sang and skipped about, and laughed with
laughter hearty,
He was wonderfully active for so very stout a party.
And I said, "Oh, gentle pieman, why so very, very merry?
Is it purity of conscience, or your one-and-seven sherry?"
* * * * *
"Then I polish all the silver which a supper-table lacquers;
Then I write the pretty mottoes which you find inside the crackers."
"Found at last!" I madly shouted. "Gentle pieman, you astound me!"
Then I waved the turtle soup enthusiastically round me.
And I shouted and I danced until he'd quite a crowd around him,
And I rushed away, exclaiming, "I have found him! I have found him!"
_W.S. Gilbert_.
GENERAL JOHN
The bravest names for fire and flames,
And all that mortal durst,
Were General John and Private James,
Of the Sixty-seventy-first.
General John was a soldier tried,
A chief of warlike dons;
A haughty stride and a withering pride
Were Major-General John.
A sneer would play on his martial phiz,
Superior birth to show;
"Pish!" was a favorite word of his,
And he often said "Ho! Ho!"
Full-Private James described might be,
As a man of mournful mind;
No characteristic trait had he
Of any distinctive kind.
From the ranks, one day, cried Private James,
"Oh! Major-General John,
I've doubts of our respective names,
My mournful mind upon."
"A glimmering thought occurs to me,
(Its source I can't unearth),
But I've a kind of notion we
Were cruelly changed at birth."
"I've a strange idea, each other's names
That we have each got on.
Such things have been," said Private James.
"They have!" sneered General John.
"My General John, I swear upon
My oath I think it is so--"
"Pish!" proudly sneered his General John,
And he also said "Ho! ho!"
"My General John! my General John!
My General John!" quoth he,
"This aristocratical sneer upon
Your face I blush to see."
"No truly great or generous cove
Deserving of them names
Would sneer at a fixed idea that's drove
In the mind of a Private James!"
Said General John, "Upon your claims
No need your breath to waste;
If this is a joke, Full-Private James,
It's a joke of doubtful taste."
"But being a man of doubtless worth,
If you feel certain quite
That we were probably changed at birth,
I'll venture to say you're right."
So General John as Private James
Fell in, parade upon;
And Private James, by change of names,
Was Major-General John.
_W.S. Gilbert_
LITTLE BILLEE
There were three sailors of Bristol City
Who took a boat and went to sea,
But first with beef and captain's biscuits,
And pickled pork they loaded she.
There was gorging Jack, and guzzling Jimmy,
And the youngest he was little Billee.
Now when they'd got as far as the Equator,
They'd nothing left but one split pea.
Says gorging Jack to guzzling Jimmy,
"I am extremely hungaree."
To gorging Jack says guzzling Jimmy,
"We've nothing left, us must eat we."
Says gorging Jack to guzzling Jimmy,
"With one another we shouldn't agree!
There's little Bill, he's young and tender,
We're old and tough, so let's eat he."
"O Billy! we're going to kill and eat you,
So undo the button of your chemie."
When Bill received this information,
He used his pocket-handkerchie,
"First let me say my catechism,
Which my poor mother taught to me."
"Make haste! make haste!" says guzzling Jimmy,
While Jack pulled out his snicker-snee.
Then Bill went up to the main-top-gallant-mast,
And down he fell on his bended knee,
He scarce had come to the Twelfth Commandment
When up he jumps--"There's land I see!"
"Jerusalem and Madagascar,
And North and South Amerikee,
There's the British flag a-riding at anchor,
With Admiral Napier, K.C.B."
So when they got aboard of the Admiral's,
He hanged fat Jack and flogged Jimmee,
But as for little Bill, he made him
The captain of a Seventy-three.
_W. M. Thackeray_.
_THE WRECK OF THE "JULIE PLANTE_"
On wan dark night on Lac St. Pierre,
De win' she blow, blow, blow,
An' de crew of de wood scow "Julie Plante"
Got scar't an' run below--
For de win' she blow lak hurricane;
Bimeby she blow some more,
An' de scow bus' up on Lac St. Pierre
Wan arpent from de shore.
De captinne walk on de fronte deck,
An' walk de him' deck too--
He call de crew from up de hole,
He call de cook also.
De cook she's name was Rosie,
She come from Montreal,
Was chambre maid on lumber barge,
On de Grande Lachine Canal.
De win' she blow from nor'-eas'-wes',--
De sout' win' she blow too,
Wen Rosie cry, "Mon cher captinne,
Mon cher, w'at I shall do?"
Den de captinne t'row de big ankerre,
But still de scow she dreef,
De crew he can't pass on de shore,
Becos he los' hees skeef.
De night was dark lak wan black cat,
De wave run high an' fas',
Wen de captinne tak' de Rosie girl
An' tie her to de mas'.
Den he also tak' de life preserve,
An' jomp off on de lak',
An' say, "Good-by, ma Rosie dear,
I go down for your sak'."
Nex' morning very early
'Bout ha'f-pas' two--t'ree--four--
De captinne--scow--an' de poor Rosie
Was corpses on de shore.
For de win' she blow lak' hurricane,
Bimeby she blow some more,
An' de scow, bus' up on Lac St. Pierre,
Wan arpent from de shore.
MORAL
Now all good wood scow sailor man
Tak' warning by dat storm
An' go an' marry some nice French girl
An' live on wan beeg farm.
De win' can blow lak' hurricane
An' s'pose she blow some more,
You can't get drown on Lac St. Pierre
So long you stay on shore.
_William H. Drummond_.
THE SHIPWRECK
Upon the poop the captain stands,
As starboard as may be;
And pipes on deck the topsail hands
To reef the topsail-gallant strands
Across the briny sea.
"Ho! splice the anchor under-weigh!"
The captain loudly cried;
"Ho! lubbers brave, belay! belay!
For we must luff for Falmouth Bay
Before to-morrow's tide."
The good ship was a racing yawl,
A spare-rigged schooner sloop,
Athwart the bows the taffrails all
In grummets gay appeared to fall,
To deck the mainsail poop.
But ere they made the Foreland Light,
And Deal was left behind,
The wind it blew great gales that night,
And blew the doughty captain tight,
Full three sheets in the wind.
And right across the tiller head
The horse it ran apace,
Whereon a traveller hitched and sped
Along the jib and vanished
To heave the trysail brace.
What ship could live in such a sea?
What vessel bear the shock?
"Ho! starboard port your helm-a-lee!
Ho! reef the maintop-gallant-tree,
With many a running block!"
And right upon the Scilly Isles
The ship had run aground;
When lo! the stalwart Captain Giles
Mounts up upon the gaff and smiles,
And slews the compass round.
"Saved! saved!" with joy the sailors cry,
And scandalize the skiff;
As taut and hoisted high and dry
They see the ship unstoppered lie
Upon the sea-girt cliff.
And since that day in Falmouth Bay,
As herring-fishers trawl,
The younkers hear the boatswains say
How Captain Giles that awful day
Preserved the sinking yawl.
_E.H. Palmer_.
_A SAILOR'S YARN_
_As narrated by the second mate to one of the marines_.
This is the tale that was told to me,
By a battered and shattered son of the sea:
To me and my messmate, Silas Green,
When I was a guileless young marine.
"'T was the good ship 'Gyacutus,'
All in the China seas;
With the wind a lee, and the capstan free,
To catch the summer breeze."
"'T was Captain Porgie on the deck
To the mate in the mizzen hatch,
While the boatswain bold, in the for'ard hold,
Was winding his larboard watch."
"'Oh, how does our good ship head to-night?
How heads our gallant craft?'
'Oh, she heads to the E. S. W. by N.
And the binnacle lies abaft.'"
"'Oh, what does the quadrant indicate?
And how does the sextant stand?'
'Oh, the sextant's down to the freezing point
And the quadrant's lost a hand.'"
"'Oh, if the quadrant's lost a hand,
And the sextant falls so low,
It's our body and bones to Davy Jones
This night are bound to go."
"'Oh, fly aloft to the garboard-strake,
And reef the spanker boom,
Bend a stubbing sail on the martingale
To give her weather room."
"'Oh, boatswain, down in the for'ard hold
What water do you find?'
'Four foot and a half by the royal gaff
And rather more behind.'"
"'Oh, sailors, collar your marline spikes
And each belaying pin;
Come, stir your stumps to spike the pumps,
Or more will be coming in.'"
"'They stirred their stumps, they spiked the pumps
They spliced the mizzen brace;
Aloft and alow they worked, but, oh!
The water gained apace."
"They bored a hole below her line
To let the water out,
But more and more with awful roar
The water in did spout."
"Then up spoke the cook of our gallant ship--
And he was a lubber brave--
'I've several wives in various ports,
And my life I'd like to save.'"
"Then up spoke the captain of marines,
Who dearly loved his prog:
'It's awful to die, and it's worse to be dry,
And I move we pipes to grog.'"
"Oh, then 'twas the gallant second-mate
As stopped them sailors' jaw,
'Twas the second-mate whose hand had weight
In laying down the law."
"He took the anchor on his back,
And leapt into the main;
Through foam and spray he clove his way,
And sunk, and rose again."
"Through foam and spray a league away
The anchor stout he bore,
Till, safe at last, I made it fast,
And warped the ship ashore."
This is the tale that was told to me,
By that modest and truthful son of the sea.
And I envy the life of a second mate,
Though captains curse him and sailors hate;
For he ain't like some of the swabs I've seen,
As would go and lie to a poor marine.
_J.J. Rache_.
THE WALLOPING WINDOW-BLIND
A capital ship for an ocean trip
Was the "Walloping Window-blind"--
No gale that blew dismayed her crew
Or troubled the captain's mind.
The man at the wheel was taught to feel
Contempt for the wildest blow,
And it often appeared, when the weather had cleared,
That he'd been in his bunk below.
The boatswain's mate was very sedate,
Yet fond of amusement, too;
And he played hop-scotch with the starboard watch,
While the captain tickled the crew.
And the gunner we had was apparently mad,
For he sat on the after rail,
And fired salutes with the captain's boots,
In the teeth of the booming gale.
The captain sat in a commodore's hat
And dined in a royal way
On toasted pigs and pickles and figs
And gummery bread each day.
But the cook was Dutch and behaved as such:
For the food that he gave the crew
Was a number of tons of hot-cross buns
Chopped up with sugar and glue.
And we all felt ill as mariners will,
On a diet that's cheap and rude;
And we shivered and shook as we dipped the cook
In a tub of his gluesome food.
Then nautical pride we laid aside,
And we cast the vessel ashore
On the Gulliby Isles, where the Poohpooh smiles,
And the Anagazanders roar.
Composed of sand was that favored land,
And trimmed with cinnamon straws;
And pink and blue was the pleasing hue
Of the Tickletoeteaser's claws.
And we sat on the edge of a sandy ledge
And shot at the whistling bee;
And the Binnacle-bats wore water-proof hats
As they danced in the sounding sea.
On rubagub bark, from dawn to dark,
We fed, till we all had grown
Uncommonly shrunk,--when a Chinese junk
Came by from the torriby zone.
She was stubby and square, but we didn't much care,
And we cheerily put to sea;
And we left the crew of the junk to chew
The bark of the rubagub tree.
_Charles E. Carryl_.
THE ROLLICKING MASTODON
A rollicking Mastodon lived in Spain,
In the trunk of a Tranquil Tree.
His face was plain, but his jocular vein
Was a burst of the wildest glee.
His voice was strong and his laugh so long
That people came many a mile,
And offered to pay a guinea a day
For the fractional part of a smile.
The Rollicking Mastodon's laugh was wide--
Indeed, 't was a matter of family pride;
And oh! so proud of his jocular vein
Was the Rollicking Mastodon over in Spain.
The Rollicking Mastodon said one day,
"I feel that I need some air,
For a little ozone's a tonic for bones,
As well as a gloss for the hair."
So he skipped along and warbled a song
In his own triumphulant way.
His smile was bright and his skip was light
As he chirruped his roundelay.
The Rollicking Mastodon tripped along,
And sang what Mastodons call a song;
But every note of it seemed to pain
The Rollicking Mastodon over in Spain.
A Little Peetookle came over the hill,
Dressed up in a bollitant coat;
And he said, "You need some harroway seed,
And a little advice for your throat."
The Mastodon smiled and said, "My child,
There's a chance for your taste to grow.
If you polish your mind, you'll certainly find
How little, how little you know."
The Little Peetookle, his teeth he ground
At the Mastodon's singular sense of sound;
For he felt it a sort of a musical stain
On the Rollicking Mastodon over in Spain.
"Alas! and alas! has it come to this pass?"
Said the Little Peetookle. "Dear me!
It certainly seems your horrible screams
Intended for music must be!"
The Mastodon stopped, his ditty he dropped,
And murmured, "Good morning, my dear!
I never will sing to a sensitive thing
That shatters a song with a sneer!"
The Rollicking Mastodon bade him "adieu."
Of course 't was a sensible thing to do;
For Little Peetookle is spared the strain
Of the Rollicking Mastodon over in Spain.
_Arthur Macy_.
THE SILVER QUESTION
The Sun appeared so smug and bright,
One day, that I made bold
To ask him what he did each night
With all his surplus gold.
He flushed uncomfortably red,
And would not meet my eye.
"I travel round the world," he said,
"And travelling rates are high."
With frigid glance I pierced him through.
He squirmed and changed his tune.
Said he: "I will be frank with you:
I lend it to the Moon."
"Poor thing! You know she's growing old
And hasn't any folk.
She suffers terribly from cold,
And half the time she's broke."
* * * * *
That evening on the beach I lay
Behind a lonely dune,
And as she rose above the bay
I buttonholed the Moon.
"Tell me about that gold," said I.
I saw her features fall.
"You see, it's useless to deny;
The Sun has told me all."
"Sir!" she exclaimed, "how _can_ you try
An honest Moon this way?
As for the gold, I put it by
Against a rainy day."
I smiled and shook my head. "All right,
If you _must_ know," said she,
"I change it into silver bright
Wherewith to tip the Sea."
"He is so faithful and so good,
A most deserving case;
If he should leave, I fear it would
Be hard to fill his place."
* * * * *
When asked if they accepted tips,
The waves became so rough;
I thought of those at sea in ships,
And felt I'd said enough.
For if one virtue I have learned,
'Tis _tact_; so I forbore
To press the matter, though I burned
To ask one question more.
I hate a scene, and do not wish
To be mixed up in gales,
But, oh, I longed to ask the Fish
Whence came their silver scales!
_Oliver Herfora_.
THE SINGULAR SANGFROID OF BABY BUNTING
Bartholomew Benjamin Bunting
Had only three passions in life,
And one of the trio was hunting,
The others his babe and his wife.
And always, so rigid his habits,
He frolicked at home until two,
And then started hunting for rabbits,
And hunted till fall of the dew.
Belinda Bellonia Bunting,
Thus widowed for half of the day,
Her duty maternal confronting,
With baby would patiently play.
When thus was her energy wasted,
A patented food she'd dispense.
(She had bought it the day that they pasted
The posters all over her fence.)
But Bonaparte Buckingham Bunting,
The infant thus blindly adored,
Replied to her worship by grunting,
Which showed he was brutally bored.
'Twas little he cared for the troubles
Of life. Like a crab on the sands,
From his sweet little mouth he blew bubbles,
And threatened the air with his hands.
Bartholomew Benjamin Bunting
One night, as his wife let him in,
Produced as the fruit of his hunting
A cottontail's velvety skin,
Which, seeing young Bonaparte wriggle,
He gave him without a demur,
And the babe with an aqueous giggle
He swallowed the whole of the fur!
Belinda Bellonia Bunting
Behaved like a consummate loon:
Her offspring in frenzy confronting
She screamed herself mottled maroon:
She felt of his vertebrae spinal,
Expecting he'd surely succumb,
And gave him one vigorous, final,
Hard prod in the pit of his tum.
But Bonaparte Buckingham Bunting,
At first but a trifle perplexed,
By a change in his manner of grunting
Soon showed he was horribly vexed.
He displayed not a sign of repentance
But spoke, in a dignified tone,
The only consecutive sentence
He uttered. 'Twas: "Lemme alone."
The Moral: The parent that uses
Precaution his folly regrets:
An infant gets all that he chooses,
An infant chews all that he gets.
And colics? He constantly has 'em
So long as his food is the best,
But he'll swallow with never a spasm
What ostriches couldn't digest.
_Guy Wetmore Carryl_.
FAITHLESS NELLY GRAY
Ben Battle was a soldier bold,
And used to war's alarms:
But a cannon-ball took off his legs,
So he laid down his arms!
Now, as they bore him off the field,
Said he, "Let others shoot,
For here I leave my second leg,
And the Forty-second Foot!"
The army surgeons made him limbs:
Said he, "They're only pegs;
But there's as wooden members quite,
As represent my legs!"
Now Ben he loved a pretty maid,
Her name was Nelly Gray;
So he went to pay her his devours
When he'd devoured his pay!
But when he called on Nelly Gray,
She made him quite a scoff;
And when she saw his wooden legs,
Began to take them off!
"O Nelly Gray! O Nelly Gray!
Is this your love so warm?
The love that loves a scarlet coat,
Should be more uniform!"
Said she, "I loved a soldier once,
For he was blithe and brave;
But I will never have a man
With both legs in the grave!"
"Before you had those timber toes,
Your love I did allow,
But then you know, you stand upon
Another footing now!"
"O Nelly Gray! O Nelly Gray!
For all your jeering speeches,
At duty's call I left my legs
In Badajos's breaches!"
"Why, then," said she, "you've lost the feet
Of legs in war's alarms,
And now you cannot wear your shoes
Upon your feats of arms!"
"Oh, false and fickle Nelly Gray;
I know why you refuse:
Though I've no feet--some other man
Is standing in my shoes!"
"I wish I ne'er had seen your face;
But now a long farewell!
For you will be my death--alas!
You will not be my Nell!"
Now, when he went from Nelly Gray,
His heart so heavy got--
And life was such a burden grown,
It made him take a knot!
So round his melancholy neck
A rope he did entwine,
And, for his second time in life
Enlisted in the Line!
One end he tied around a beam,
And then removed his pegs,
And as his legs were off,--of course,
He soon was off his legs!
And there he hung till he was dead
As any nail in town,--
For though distress had cut him up,
It could not cut him down!
A dozen men sat on his corpse,
To find out why he died--
And they buried Ben in four cross-roads,
With a stake in his inside!
_Thomas Hood_.
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN
By the side of a murmuring stream an elderly gentleman sat.
On the top of his head was a wig, and a-top of his wig was his hat.
The wind it blew high and blew strong, as the elderly gentleman sat;
And bore from his head in a trice, and plunged in the river his hat.
The gentleman then took his cane which lay by his side as he sat;
And he dropped in the river his wig, in attempting to get out his
hat.
His breast it grew cold with despair, and full in his eye madness
sat;
So he flung in the river his cane to swim with his wig, and his hat.
Cool reflection at last came across while this elderly gentleman
sat;
So he thought he would follow the stream and look for his cane, wig,
and hat.
His head being thicker than common, o'er-balanced the rest of his
fat;
And in plumped this son of a woman to follow his wig, cane, and hat.
_George Canning_.
MALUM OPUS
Prope ripam fluvii solus
A senex silently sat;
Super capitum ecce his wig,
Et wig super, ecce his hat.
Blew Zephyrus alte, acerbus,
Dum elderly gentleman sat;
Et a capite took up quite torve
Et in rivum projecit his hat.
Tunc soft maledixit the old man,
Tunc stooped from the bank where he sat
Et cum scipio poked in the water,
Conatus servare his hat.
Blew Zephyrus alte, acerbus,
The moment it saw him at that;
Et whisked his novum scratch wig
In flumen, along with his hat.
Ab imo pectore damnavit
In coeruleus eye dolor sat;
Tunc despairingly threw in his cane
Nare cum his wig and his hat.
L'ENVOI
Contra bonos mores, don't swear
It 'est wicked you know (verbum sat),
Si this tale habet no other moral
Mehercle! You're gratus to that!
_James Appleton Morgan_.
_ÆSTIVATION_
In candent ire the solar splendor flames;
The foles, languescent, pend from arid rames;
His humid front the cive, anheling, wipes,
And dreams of erring on ventiferous ripes.
How dulce to vive occult to mortal eyes,
Dorm on the herb with none to supervise,
Carp the suave berries from the crescent vine,
And bibe the flow from longicaudate kine.
To me also, no verdurous visions come
Save you exiguous pool's confervascum,--
No concave vast repeats the tender hue
That laves my milk-jug with celestial blue.
Me wretched! Let me curr to quercine shades!
Effund your albid hausts, lactiferous maids!
Oh, might I vole to some umbrageous chump,--
Depart,--be off,--excede,--evade,--erump!
_O. W. Holmes_.
A HOLIDAY TASK
_Air--Jullien's Polka_
Qui nunc dancere vult modo
Wants to dance in the fashion, oh!
Discere debet--ought to know,
Kickere floor cum heel et toe
One, two three,
Hop with me,
Whirligig, twirligig, rapidè.
Polkam jungere, Virgo, vis,
Will you join the Polka, Miss?
Liberius--most willingly.
Sic agimus--then let us try:
Nunc vide
Skip with me,
Whirlabout, roundabout, celerè.
Tum laevâ citò, tum dextrâ
First to the left, and then t' other way;
Aspice retrò in vultu,
You look at her, and she looks at you.
Das palmam,
Change hands ma'am
Celerè--run away, just in sham.
_Gilbert Abbott à Becket_.
PUER EX JERSEY
Puer ex Jersey
Iens ad school;
Vidit in meadow,
Infestum mule.
Ille approaches
O magnus sorrow!
Puer it skyward.
Funus ad morrow.
MORAL
Qui vidit a thing
Non ei well-known,
Est bene for him
Relinqui id alone.
_Anonymous_.
THE LITTLE PEACH
Une petite pêche dans un orchard fleurit,
Attendez à mon narration triste!
Une petite pêche verdante fleurit.
Grâce à chaleur de soleil, et moisture de miste.
Il fleurit, il fleurit,
Attendez à mon narration triste!
Signes dures pour les deux,
Petit Jean et sa soeur Sue,
Et la pêche d'une verdante hue,
Qui fleurit, qui fleurit,
Attendez a mon narration triste!
_Anonymous_.
_MONSIEUR McGINTÉ_
Monsieur McGinté allait en has jusqu'an fond du mer,
Ils ne l'ont pas encore trouvé
Je crois qu'il est certainement mouillé.
Monsieur McGinté, je le repéte, allait jusqu'au fond du mer,
Habillé dans sa meilleure costume.
_Anonymous_.
_YE LAYE OF YE WOODPECKORE_
_Picus Erythrocephalus_:
O whither goest thou, pale studént
Within the wood so fur?
Art on the chokesome cherry bent?
Dost seek the chestnut burr?
_Pale Studént_:
O it is not for the mellow chestnut
That I so far am come,
Nor yet for puckery cherries, but
For Cypripediúm.
A blossom hangs the choke-cherry
And eke the chestnut burr,
And thou a silly fowl must be,
Thou red-head wood-peckére.
_Picas Erythrocephalus_:
Turn back, turn back, thou pale studént,
Nor in the forest go;
There lurks beneath his bosky tent
The deadly mosquitó,
And there the wooden-chuck doth tread,
And from the oak-tree's top
The red, red squirrels on thy head
The frequent acorn drop.
_Pale Studént_:
The wooden-chuck is next of kin
Unto the wood-peckére:
I fear not thine ill-boding din,
And why should I fear her?
What though a score of acorns drop
And squirrels' fur be red!
'Tis not so ruddy as thy top--
So scarlet as thy head.
O rarely blooms the Cypripe-
diúm upon its stalk;
And like a torch it shines to me
Adown the dark wood-walk.
O joy to pluck it from the ground,
To view the purple sac,
To touch the sessile stigma's round--
And shall I then turn back?
_Picus Erytbrocephalus_:
O black and shining is the log
That feeds the sumptuous weed,
Nor stone is found nor bedded log
Where foot may well proceed.
Midmost it glimmers in the mire
Like Jack o' Lanthorn's spark,
Lighting, with phosphorescent fire,
The green umbrageous dark.
There while thy thirsty glances drink
The fair and baneful plant,
Thy shoon within the ooze shall sink
And eke thine either pant.
_Pale Studént_:
Give o'er, give o'er, thou wood-peckóre;
The bark upon the tree,
Thou, at thy will, mayst peck and bore
But peck and bore not me.
Full two long hours I've searched about
And 't would in sooth be rum,
If I should now go back without
The Cypripediúm.
_Picus Erythrocephalus_:
Farewell! Farewell! But this I tell
To thee, thou pale studént,
Ere dews have fell, thou'lt rue it well
That woodward thou didst went:
Then whilst thou blows the drooping nose
And wip'st the pensive eye--
There where the sad _symplocarpus foetidus_ grows,
Then think--O think of I!
Loud flouted there that student wight
Solche warnynge for to hear;
"I scorn, old hen, thy threats of might,
And eke thine ill grammére."
"Go peck the lice (or green or red)
That swarm the bass-wood tree,
But wag no more thine addled head
Nor clack thy tongue at me."
The wood-peck turned to whet her beak,
The student heard her drum,
As through the wood he went to seek
The Cypripediúm.
Alas! and for that pale studént:
The evening bell did ring,
And down the walk the Freshmen went
Unto the prayer-meetíng;
Upon the fence loud rose the song,
The weak, weak tea was o'er--
Ha! who is he that sneaks along
Into South Middle's door?
The mud was on his shoon, and O!
The briar was in his thumb,
His staff was in his hand but no--
No Cypripediúm.
_Henry A. Beers_.
_COLLUSION BETWEEN A ALEGAITER AND A WATER-SNAIK_
There is a niland on a river lying,
Which runs into Gautimaly, a warm country,
Lying near the Tropicks, covered with sand;
Hear and their a symptum of a Wilow,
Hanging of its umberagious limbs & branches
Over the clear streme meandering far below.
This was the home of the now silent Alegaiter,
When not in his other element confine'd:
Here he wood set upon his eggs asleep
With 1 ey observant of flis and other passing
Objects: a while it kept a going on so:
Fereles of danger was the happy Alegaiter!
But a las! in a nevil our he was fourced to
Wake! that dreme of Blis was two sweet for him.
1 morning the sun arose with unusool splender
Whitch allso did our Alegaiter, coming from the water,
His scails a flinging of the rais of the son back,
To the fountain-head which tha originly sprung from,
But having not had nothing to eat for some time, he
Was slepy and gap'd, in a short time, widely.
Unfoalding soon a welth of perl-white teth,
The rais of the son soon shet his sinister ey
Because of their mutool splendor and warmth.
The evil Our (which I sed) was now come;
Evidently a good chans for a water-snaik
Of the large specie, which soon appeared
Into the horison, near the bank where reposed
Calmly in slepe the Alegaiter before spoken of.
About 60 feet was his Length (not the 'gaiter)
And he was aperiently a well-proportioned snaik.
When he was all ashore he glared upon
The iland with approval, but was soon
"Astonished with the view and lost to wonder" (from Wats)
(For jest then he began to see the Alegaiter)
Being a nateral enemy of his'n, he worked hisself
Into a fury, also a ni position.
Before the Alegaiter well could ope
His eye (in other words perceive his danger)
The Snaik had enveloped his body just 19
Times with "foalds voluminous and vast" (from Milton)
And had tore off several scails in the confusion,
Besides squeazing him awfully into his stomoc.
Just then, by a fortinate turn in his affairs,
He ceazed into his mouth the careless tale
Of the unreflecting water-snaik! Grown desperate
He, finding that his tale was fast squesed
Terrible while they roaled all over the iland.
It was a well-conduckted Affair; no noise
Disturbed the harmony of the seen, ecsept
Onct when a Willow was snaped into by the roaling.
Eeach of the combatence hadn't a minit for holering.
So the conflick was naterally tremenjous!
But soon by grate force the tail was bit complete-
Ly of; but the eggzeration was too much
For his delicate Constitootion; he felt a compression
Onto his chest and generally over his body;
When he ecspressed his breathing, it was with
Grate difficulty that he felt inspired again onct more.
Of course this state must suffer a revolootion.
So the alegaiter give but one yel, and egspired.
The water-snaik realed hisself off, & survay'd
For say 10 minits, the condition of
His fo: then wondering what made his tail hurt,
He slowly went off for to cool.
_J. W. Morris_.
_ODD TO A KROKIS_
Selestial apoley which Didest inspire.
the souls of burns and pop with sackred fir.
Kast thy Mantil over me When i shal sing,
the praiz Of A sweat flower who grows in spring
Which has of late kome under the Fokis.
of My eyes. It is called a krokis.
Sweat lovly prety littil sweat Thing,
you bloometh before The lairicks on High sing,
thy lefs are neithir Red Nor yelly.
but Just betwixt the two you hardy felly.
i fear youl yet be Nippit with the frost.
As Maney a one has known to there kost.
you should have not kome out in such a hurrey.
As this is only the Month of Febrywurrey.
and you may expick yet Much bad wethir.
when all your blads will krunkil up like Burnt leather.
alas. alas. theres Men which tries to rime,
who have like you kome out befor there time.
The Moril of My peese depend upon it.
is good so here i End my odd or sonit.
_Anonymous_.
_SOME VERSES TO SNAIX_
Prodiggus reptile! long and skaly kuss!
You are the dadrattedest biggest thing I ever
Seed that cud ty itself into a double bo-
Not, and cum all strate again in a
Minnit or so, without winkin or seemin
To experience any particular pane
In the diafram.
Stoopenjus inseck! marvelous annimile!
You are no doubt seven thousand yeres
Old, and hav a considerable of a
Family sneekin round thru the tall
Gras in Africa, a eetin up little greezy
Niggers, and wishin they was biggir.
I wonder how big yu was when yu
Was a inphant about 2 fete long. I
Expec yu was a purty good size, and
Lived on phrogs, and lizzerds, and polly-
Wogs and sutch things.
You are havin' a nice time now, ennyhow--
Don't have nothing to do but lay oph.
And etc kats and rabbits, and stic
Out yure tung and twist yur tale.
I wunder if yu ever swollered a man
Without takin oph his butes. If there was
Brass buttins on his kote, I spose
Yu had ter swaller a lot of buttin-
Wholes, and a shu--hamer to nock
The soals oph of the boots and drive in
The tax, so that they wouldn't kut yure
Inside. I wunder if vittles taste
Good all the way down. I expec so--
At leest, fur 6 or 7 fete.
You are so mighty long, I shud thynk
If your tale was kold, yure hed
Woodent no it till the next day,
But it's hard tu tell: snaix is snaix.
_Anonymous_.
_A GREAT MAN_
Ye muses, pour the pitying tear
For Pollio snatch'd away:
For had he liv'd another year!
--He had not dy'd to-day.
O, were he born to bless mankind,
In virtuous times of yore,
Heroes themselves had fallen behind!
--Whene'er he went before.
How sad the groves and plains appear,
And sympathetic sheep:
Even pitying hills would drop a tear!
--If hills could learn to weep.
His bounty in exalted strain
Each bard might well display:
Since none implor'd relief in vain!
--That went reliev'd away.
And hark! I hear the tuneful throng;
His obsequies forbid.
He still shall live, shall live as long
--As ever dead man did.
_Oliver Goldsmith_.
_AN ELEGY_
_On the Glory of her Sex, Mrs. Mary Blaize_
Good people all, with one accord,
Lament for Madam Blaize,
Who never wanted a good word--
From those who spoke her praise.
The needy seldom pass'd her door,
And always found her kind;
She freely lent to all the poor--
Who left a pledge behind.
She strove the neighborhood to please
With manners wondrous winning;
And never follow'd wicked ways--
Unless when she was sinning.
At church, in silks and satins new,
With hoop of monstrous size,
She never slumber'd in her pew--
But when she shut her eyes.
Her love was sought, I do aver,
By twenty beaux and more;
The King himself has follow'd her--
When she has walk'd before.
But now, her wealth and finery fled,
Her hangers-on cut short all;
The doctors found, when she was dead--
Her last disorder mortal.
Let us lament, in sorrow sore,
For Kent Street well may say,
That had she lived a twelvemonth more--
She had not died to-day.
_Oliver Goldsmith_.
_PARSON GRAY_
A quiet home had Parson Gray,
Secluded in a vale;
His daughters all were feminine,
And all his sons were male.
How faithfully did Parson Gray
The bread of life dispense--
Well "posted" in theology,
And post and rail his fence.
'Gainst all the vices of the age
He manfully did battle;
His chickens were a biped breed,
And quadruped his cattle.
No clock more punctually went,
He ne'er delayed a minute--
Nor ever empty was his purse,
When he had money in it.
His piety was ne'er denied;
His truths hit saint and sinner;
At morn he always breakfasted;
He always dined at dinner.
He ne'er by any luck was grieved,
By any care perplexed--
No filcher he, though when he preached,
He always "took" a text.
As faithful characters he drew
As mortal ever saw;
But ah! poor parson! when he died,
His breath he could not draw!
_Oliver Goldsmith_.
_AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF A MAD DOG_
Good people all, of every sort,
Give ear unto my song;
And if you find it wondrous short,--
It cannot hold you long.
In Islington there was a man,
Of whom the world might say
That still a godly race he ran,--
Whene'er he went to pray.
A kind and gentle heart he had,
To comfort friends and foes;
The naked every day he clad,--
When he put on his clothes.
And in that town a dog was found,
As many dogs there be,
Both mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound,
And curs of low degree.
The dog and man at first were friends;
But when a pique began,
The dog, to gain some private ends,
Went mad, and bit the man.
Around from all the neighboring streets,
The wondering neighbors ran,
And swore the dog had lost his wits
To bite so good a man.
The wound it seemed both sore and sad
To every Christian eye;
And while they swore the dog was mad
They swore the man would die.
But soon a wonder came to light,
That showed the rogues they lied;
The man recovered of the bite,
The dog it was that died.
_Oliver Goldsmith_.
_THE WONDERFUL OLD MAN_
There was an old man
Who lived on a common
And, if fame speaks true,
He was born of a woman.
Perhaps you will laugh,
But for truth I've been told
He once was an infant
Tho' age made him old.
Whene'er he was hungry
He longed for some meat;
And if he could get it
'T was said he would eat.
When thirsty he'd drink
If you gave him a pot,
And what he drank mostly
Ran down his throat.
He seldom or never
Could see without light,
And yet I've been told he
Could hear in the night.
He has oft been awake
In the daytime, 't is said,
And has fallen asleep
As he lay in his bed.
'T is reported his tongue
Always moved when he talk'd,
And he stirred both his arms
And his legs when he walk'd;
And his gait was so odd
Had you seen him you 'd burst,
For one leg or t' other
Would always be first.
His face was the drollest
That ever was seen,
For if 't was not washed
It seldom was clean;
His teeth he expos'd when
He happened to grin,
And his mouth stood across
'Twixt his nose and his chin.
When this whimsical chap
Had a river to pass,
If he couldn't get over
He stayed where he was.
'T is said he ne'er ventured
To quit the dry ground,
Yet so great was his luck
He never was drowned.
At last he fell sick,
As old chronicles tell,
And then, as folks say,
He was not very well.
But what was as strange
In so weak a condition,
As he could not give fees
He could get no physician.
What wonder he died!
Yet 't is said that his death
Was occasioned at last
By the loss of his breath.
But peace to his bones
Which in ashes now moulder.
Had he lived a day longer
He'd have been a day older.
_Anonymous_
_A CHRONICLE_
Once--but no matter when--
There lived--no matter where--
A man, whose name--but then
I need not that declare.
He--well, he had been born,
And so he was alive;
His age--I details scorn--
Was somethingty and five.
He lived--how many years
I truly can't decide;
But this one fact appears
He lived--until he died.
"He died," I have averred,
But cannot prove 't was so,
But that he was interred,
At any rate, I know.
I fancy he'd a son,
I hear he had a wife:
Perhaps he'd more than one,
I know not, on my life!
But whether he was rich,
Or whether he was poor,
Or neither--both--or which,
I cannot say, I'm sure.
I can't recall his name,
Or what he used to do:
But then--well, such is fame!
'T will so serve me and you.
And that is why I thus,
About this unknown man
Would fain create a fuss,
To rescue, if I can.
From dark oblivion's blow,
Some record of his lot:
But, ah! I do not know
Who--where--when--why--or what.
MORAL
In this brief pedigree
A moral we should find--
But what it ought to be
Has quite escaped my mind!
_Anonymous_.
_ON THE OXFORD CARRIER_
Here lieth one, who did most truly prove
That he could never die while he could move;
So hung his destiny never to rot
While he might still jog on and keep his trot;
Made of sphere metal, never to decay
Until his revolution was at stay.
Time numbers motion, yet (without a crime
'Gainst old truth) motion number'd out his time,
And like an engine moved with wheel and weight,
His principles being ceased, he ended straight.
Rest, that gives all men life, gave him his death,
And too much breathing put him out of breath;
Nor were it contradiction to affirm,
Too long vacation hasten'd on his term.
Merely to drive the time away he sicken'd,
Fainted, and died, nor would with ale be quicken'd;
"Nay," quoth he, on his swooning bed outstretch'd,
"If I mayn't carry, sure I'll ne'er be fetch'd,
But vow, though the cross doctors all stood hearers,
For one carrier put down to make six bearers."
Ease was his chief disease; and to judge right,
He died for heaviness that his cart went light:
His leisure told him that his time was come,
And lack of load made his life burdensome.
That even to his last breath (there be that say't),
As he were press'd to death, he cried, "More weight;"
But, had his doings lasted as they were,
He had been an immortal carrier.
Obedient to the moon he spent his date
In course reciprocal, and had his fate
Link'd to the mutual flowing of the seas,
Yet (strange to think) his wane was his increase:
His letters are deliver'd all, and gone,
Only remains the superscription.
_John Milton_.
_NEPHELIDIA_
From the depth of the dreamy decline of the dawn
through a notable nimbus of nebulous noonshine,
Pallid and pink as the palm of the flag-flower
that flickers with fear of the flies as they float,
Are they looks of our lovers that lustrously lean from a marvel
of mystic miraculous moonshine,
These that we feel in the blood of our blushes that thicken and
threaten with sobs from the throat?
Thicken and thrill as a theatre thronged at appeal of an actor's
appalled agitation,
Fainter with fear of the fires of the future than pale with the
promise of pride in the past;
Flushed with the famishing fulness of fever that reddens with
radiance of rathe recreation,
Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam through the gloom
of the gloaming when ghosts go aghast?
Nay, for the nick of the tick of the time is a tremulous touch
on the temples of terror,
Strained as the sinews yet strenuous with strife of the dead who
is dumb as the dust-heaps of death:
Surely no soul is it, sweet as the spasm of erotic emotional
exquisite error,
Bathed in the balms of beatified bliss, beatific itself by
beatitude's breath.
Surely no spirit or sense of a soul that was soft to the spirit
and soul of our senses
Sweetens the stress of suspiring suspicion that sobs in the
semblance and sound of a sigh;
Only this oracle opens Olympian, in mystical moods and
triangular tenses--
Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the
dawn of the day when we die.
Mild is the mirk and monotonous music of memory melodiously mute
as it may be,
While the hope in the heart of a hero is bruised by the breach of
men's rapiers resigned to the rod;
Made meek as a mother whose bosom--beats bound with the bliss--
bringing bulk of a balm--breathing baby,
As they grope through the grave-yards of creeds, under skies
growing green'at a groan for the grimness of God.
Blank is the book of his bounty beholden of old and its binding
is blacker than bluer:
Out of blue into black is the scheme of the skies, and their
dews are the wine of the bloodshed of things;
Till the darkling desire of delight shall be free as a fawn that
is freed from the fangs that pursue her,
Till the heart-beats of hell shall be hushed by a hymn from the
hunt that has harried the kernel of kings.
_A. C. Swinburne,
in "The Heptalogia_."
_MARTIN LUTHER AT POTSDAM_
What lightning shall light it? What thunder shall tell it?
In the height of the height, in the depth of the deep?
Shall the sea--storm declare it, or paint it, or smell it?
Shall the price of a slave be its treasure to keep?
When the night has grown near with the gems on her bosom,
When the white of mine eyes is the whiteness of snow,
When the cabman--in liquor--drives a blue roan, a kicker,
Into the land of the dear long ago.
Ah!--Ah, again!--You will come to me, fall on me--
You are _so_ heavy, and I am _so_ flat.
And I? I shall not be at home when you call on me,
But stray down the wind like a gentleman's hat:
I shall list to the stars when the music is purple,
Be drawn through a pipe, and exhaled into rings;
Turn to sparks, and then straightway get stuck in the gateway
That stands between speech and unspeakable things.
As I mentioned before, by what light is it lighted?
Oh! Is it fourpence, or piebald, or gray?
Is it a mayor that a mother has knighted,
Or is it a horse of the sun and the day?
Is it a pony? If so, who will change it?
O golfer, be quiet, and mark where it scuds,
And think of its paces--of owners and races--
Relinquish the links for the study of studs.
Not understood? Take me hence! Take me yonder!
Take me away to the land of my rest--
There where the Ganges and other gees wander,
And uncles and antelopes act for the best,
And all things are mixed and run into each other
In a violet twilight of virtues and sins,
With the church-spires below you and no one to show you
Where the curate leaves off and the pew-rent begins!
In the black night through the rank grass the snakes peer--
The cobs and the cobras are partial to grass--
And a boy wanders out with a knowledge of Shakespeare
That's not often found in a boy of his class,
And a girl wanders out without any knowledge,
And a bird wanders out, and a cow wanders out,
Likewise one wether, and they wander together--
There's a good deal of wandering lying about.
But it's all for the best; I've been told by my friends, Sir,
That in verses I'd written the meaning was slight;
I've tried with no meaning--to make 'em amends, Sir--
And find that this kind's still more easy to write.
The title has nothing to do with the verses,
But think of the millions--the laborers who
In busy employment find deepest enjoyment,
And yet, like my title, have nothing to do!
_Barry Pain_.
_COMPANIONS_
I know not of what we ponder'd
Or made pretence to talk,
As, her hand within mine, we wander'd
Tow'rd the pool by the limetree walk,
While the dew fell in showers from the passion flowers
And the blush-rose bent on her stalk.
I cannot recall her figure:
Was it regal as Juno's own?
Or only a trifle bigger
Than the elves who surround the throne
Of the Faëry Queen, and are seen, I ween,
By mortals in dreams alone?
What her eyes were like, I know not:
Perhaps they were blurred with tears;
And perhaps in your skies there glow not
(On the contrary) clearer spheres.
No as to her eyes I am just as wise
As you or the cat, my dears.
Her teeth, I presume, were "pearly":
But which was she, brunette or blonde?
Her hair, was it quaintly curly,
Or as straight as a beadle's wand?
That I failed to remark;--it was rather dark
And shadowy round the pond.
Then the hand that reposed so snugly
In mine--was it plump or spare?
Was the countenance fair or ugly?
Nay, children, you have me there!
My eyes were p'raps blurr'd; and besides, I'd heard
That it's horribly rude to stare.
And I--was I brusque and surly?
Or oppressively bland and fond?
Was I partial to rising early?
Or why did we twain abscond,
All breakfastless too, from the public view
To prowl by a misty pond?
What passed, what was felt or spoken--
Whether anything passed at all--
And whether the heart was broken
That beat under that sheltering shawl--
(If shawl she had on, which I doubt)--has gone.
Yes, gone from me past recall.
Was I haply the lady's suitor?
Or her uncle? I can't make out--
Ask your governess, dears, or tutor.
For myself, I'm in hopeless doubt
As to why we were there, and who on earth we were,
And what this is all about.
_C. S. Calverley_.
_THE COCK AND THE BULL_
You see this pebble-stone? It's a thing I bought
Of a bit of a chit of a boy i' the mid o' the day--
I like to dock the smaller parts-o-speech,
As we curtail the already cur-tailed cur
(You catch the paronomasia, play 'po' words?)
Did, rather, i' the pre-Landseerian days.
Well, to my muttons. I purchased the concern,
And clapt it i' my poke, having given for same
By way o' chop, swop, barter or exchange--
"Chop" was my snickering dandiprat's own term--
One shilling and fourpence, current coin o' the realm.
O-n-e one and f-o-u-r four
Pence, one and fourpence--you are with me, sir?--
What hour it skills not: ten or eleven o' the clock,
One day (and what a roaring day it was
Go shop or sight-see--bar a spit o' rain!)
In February, eighteen sixty nine,
Alexandrina Victoria, Fidei,
Hm--hm--how runs the jargon? being on the throne.
Such, sir, are all the facts, succinctly put,
The basis or substratum--what you will--
Of the impending eighty thousand lines.
"Not much in 'em either," quoth perhaps simple Hodge.
But there's a superstructure. Wait a bit.
Mark first the rationale of the thing:
Hear logic rivel and levigate the deed.
That shilling--and for matter o' that, the pence--
I had o' course upo' me--wi' me say--
(_Mecum's_ the Latin, make a note o' that)
When I popp'd pen i' stand, scratched ear, wiped snout,
(Let everybody wipe his own himself)
Sniff'd--tch!--at snuffbox; tumbled up, he-heed,
Haw-haw'd (not he-haw'd, that's another guess thing):
Then fumbled at, and stumbled out of, door,
I shoved the timber ope wi' my omoplat;
And _in vestibulo_, i' the lobby to-wit,
(Iacobi Facciolati's rendering, sir,)
Donned galligaskins, antigropeloes,
And so forth; and, complete with hat and gloves,
One on and one a-dangle i' my hand,
And ombrifuge (Lord love you!) cas o' rain,
I flopped forth, 'sbuddikins! on my own ten toes,
(I do assure you there be ten of them)
And went clump-clumping up hill and down dale
To find myself o' the sudden i' front o' the boy.
Put case I hadn't 'em on me, could I ha' bought
This sort-o'-kind-o'-what-you-might-call-toy,
This pebble-thing, o' the boy-thing? Q. E. D.
That's proven without aid for mumping Pope,
Sleek porporate or bloated cardinal.
(Isn't it, old Fatchops? You're in Euclid now.)
So, having the shilling--having i' fact a lot--
And pence and halfpence, ever so many o' them,
I purchased, as I think I said before,
The pebble (_lapis, lapidis, di, dem, de_--
What nouns 'crease short i' the genitive, Fatchops, eh?)
O the boy, a bare-legg'd beggarly son of a gun,
For one-and-fourpence. Here we are again.
Now Law steps in, biwigged, voluminous-jaw'd;
Investigates and re-investigates.
Was the transaction illegal? Law shakes head.
Perpend, sir, all the bearings of the case.
At first the coin was mine, the chattel his.
But now (by virtue of the said exchange
And barter) _vice versa_ all the coin,
_Rer juris operationem_, vests
I' the boy and his assigns till ding o' doom;
_In saecula saeculo-o-o-orum_;
(I think I hear the Abate mouth out that.)
To have and hold the same to him and them ...
Confer some idiot on Conveyancing.
Whereas the pebble and every part thereof,
And all that appertaineth thereunto,
_Quodcunque pertinet ad em rem_,
(I fancy, sir, my Latin's rather pat)
Or shall, will, may, might, can, could, would, or should,
_Subaudi caetera_--clap we to the close--
For what's the good of law in such a case o' the kind
Is mine to all intents and purposes.
This settled, I resume the thread o' the tale.
Now for a touch o' the vendor's quality.
He says a gen'lman bought a pebble of him,
(This pebble i' sooth, sir, which I hold i' my hand)--
And paid for 't, _like_ a gen'lman, on the nail.
"Did I o'ercharge him a ha'penny? Devil a bit.
Fiddlepin's end! Get out, you blazing ass!
Gabble o' the goose. Don't bugaboo-baby _me_!
Go double or quits? Yah! tittup! what's the odds?"
--There's the transaction viewed in the vendor's light.
Next ask that dumpled hag, stood snuffling by,
With her three frowsy blowsy brats o' babes,
The scum o' the Kennel, cream o' the filth-heap--Faugh!
Aie, aie, aie, aie! [Greek: otototototoi],
('Stead which we blurt out, Hoighty toighty now)--
And the baker and candlestick maker, and Jack and Gill,
Blear'd Goody this and queasy Gaffer that,
Ask the Schoolmaster, Take Schoolmaster first.
He saw a gentleman purchase of a lad
A stone, and pay for it _rite_ on the square,
And carry it off _per saltum_, jauntily
_Propria quae maribus_, gentleman's property now
(Agreeable to the law explained above).
_In proprium usum_, for his private ends,
The boy he chucked a brown i' the air, and bit
I' the face the shilling; heaved a thumping stone
At a lean hen that ran cluck-clucking by,
(And hit her, dead as nail i' post o' door,)
Then _abiit_--What's the Ciceronian phrase?
_Excessit, evasit, erupit_--off slogs boy;
Off like bird, _avi similis_--(you observed
The dative? Pretty i' the Mantuan!)--_Anglice_
Off in three flea skips. _Hactenus_, so far,
So good, _tam bene. Bene, satis, male_,--
Where was I with my trope 'bout one in a quag?
I did once hitch the Syntax into verse
_Verbum personale_, a verb personal,
_Concordat_--"ay", agrees old Fatchops--_cum
Nominativo_, with its nominative,
_Genere_, i' point of gender, _numero_,
O' number, _et persona_, and person. _Ut_,
Instance: _Sol ruit_, down flops sun, _et_ and,
_Montes umbrantur_, out flounce mountains. Pah!
Excuse me, sir, I think I'm going mad.
You see the trick on't, though, and can yourself
Continue the discourse _ad libitum_.
It takes up about eighty thousand lines,
A thing imagination boggles at;
And might, odds-bobs, sir! in judicious hands
Extend from here to Mesopotamy.
_C.S. Calverley_.
LOVERS AND A REFLECTION
In moss-prankt dells which the sunbeams flatter
(And heaven it knoweth what that may mean;
Meaning, however, is no great matter)
Where woods are a-tremble with words a-tween;
Thro' God's own heather we wonned together,
I and my Willie (O love my love):
I need hardly remark it was glorious weather,
And flitter-bats wavered alow, above:
Boats were curtseying, rising, bowing,
(Boats in that climate are so polite,)
And sands were a ribbon of green endowing,
And O the sun-dazzle on bark and bight!
Thro' the rare red heather we danced together
(O love my Willie,) and smelt for flowers:
I must mention again it was glorious weather,
Rhymes are so scarce in this world of ours:
By rises that flushed with their purple favors,
Thro' becks that brattled o'er grasses sheen,
We walked or waded, we two young shavers,
Thanking our stars we were both so green.
We journeyed in parallels, I and Willie,
In fortunate parallels! Butterflies,
Hid in weltering shadows of daffodilly
Or marjoram, kept making peacock eyes:
Song-birds darted about, some inky
As coal, some snowy (I ween) as curds;
Or rosy as pinks, or as roses pinky--
They reek of no eerie To-come, those birds!
But they skim over bents which the mill-stream washes,
Or hang in the lift 'neath a white cloud's hem;
They need no parasols, no goloshes;
And good Mrs. Trimmer she feedeth them.
Then we thrid God's cowslips (as erst his heather),
That endowed the wan grass with their golden blooms;
And snapt--(it was perfectly charming weather)--
Our fingers at Fate and her goddess-glooms:
And Willie 'gan sing--(Oh, his notes were fluty;
Wafts fluttered them out to the white-winged sea)--
Something made up of rhymes that have done much duty,
Rhymes (better to put it) of "ancientry":
Bowers of flowers encountered showers
In William's carol--(O love my Willie!)
Then he bade sorrow borrow from blithe tomorrow
I quite forget what--say a daffodilly.
A nest in a hollow, "with buds to follow,"
I think occurred next in his nimble strain;
And clay that was "kneaden" of course in Eden--
A rhyme most novel I do maintain:
Mists, bones, the singer himself, love-stories,
And all least furlable things got furled;
Not with any design to conceal their glories,
But simply and solely to rhyme with world.
O if billows and pillows and hours and flowers,
And all the brave rhymes of an elder day,
Could be furled together, this genial weather,
And carted or carried on wafts away,
Nor ever again trotted out--ah me!
How much fewer volumes of verse there'd be.
_C.S. Calverley_
AN IMITATION OF WORDSWORTH
There is a river clear and fair,
'Tis neither broad nor narrow;
It winds a little here and there--
It winds about like any hare;
And then it takes as straight a course
As on the turnpike road a horse,
Or through the air an arrow.
The trees that grow upon the shore,
Have grown a hundred years or more;
So long there is no knowing.
Old Daniel Dobson does not know
When first these trees began to grow;
But still they grew, and grew, and grew,
As if they'd nothing else to do,
But ever to be growing.
The impulses of air and sky
Have rear'd their stately heads so high,
And clothed their boughs with green;
Their leaves the dews of evening quaff,--
And when the wind blows loud and keen,
I've seen the jolly timbers laugh,
And shake their sides with merry glee--
Wagging their heads in mockery.
Fix'd are their feet in solid earth,
Where winds can never blow;
But visitings of deeper birth
Have reach'd their roots below.
For they have gain'd the river's brink,
And of the living waters drink.
There's little Will, a five years child--
He is my youngest boy:
To look on eyes so fair and wild,
It is a very joy:--
He hath conversed with sun and shower,
And dwelt with every idle flower,
As fresh and gay as them.
He loiters with the briar rose,--
The blue-belles are his play-fellows,
That dance upon their slender stem.
And I have said, my little Will,
Why should not he continue still
A thing of Nature's rearing?
A thing beyond the world's control--
A living vegetable soul,--
No human sorrow fearing.
It were a blessed sight to see
That child become a Willow-tree,
His brother trees among.
He'd be four times as tall as me,
And live three times as long.
_Catharine M. Fanshawe_.
THE FAMOUS BALLAD OF THE JUBILEE CUP
You may lift me up in your arms, lad, and turn my face to the sun,
For a last look back at the dear old track where the Jubilee cup
was won;
And draw your chair to my side, lad--no, thank ye, I feel no pain--
For I'm going out with the tide, lad; but I'll tell you the tale
again.
I'm seventy-nine or nearly, and my head it has long turned gray,
But it all comes back as clearly as though it was yesterday--
The dust, and the bookies shouting around the clerk of the scales,
And the clerk of the course, and the nobs in force, and 'Is
'Ighness the Pr**ce of W*les.
'Twas a nine-hole thresh to wind'ard (but none of us cared for that),
With a straight run home to the service tee, and a finish along
the flat,
"Stiff?" ah, well you may say it! Spot barred, and at five stone
ten!
But at two and a bisque I'd ha' run the risk; for I was a
greenhorn then.
So we stripped to the B. Race signal, the old red swallowtail--
There was young Ben Bolt and the Portland Colt, and Aston Villa,
and Yale;
And W. G., and Steinitz, Leander and The Saint,
And the G*rm*n Emp*r*r's Meteor, a-looking as fresh as paint;
John Roberts (scratch), and Safety Match, The Lascar, and Lorna
Doone,
Oom Paul (a bye), and Romany Rye, and me upon Wooden Spoon;
And some of us cut for partners, and some of us strung for baulk,
And some of us tossed for stations--But there, what use to talk?
Three-quarter-back on the Kingsclere crack was station enough for
me,
With a fresh jackyarder blowing and the Vicarage goal a-lee!
And I leaned and patted her centre-bit and eased the quid in her
cheek,
With a "Soh my lass!" and a "Woa you brute!"--for she could do all
but speak.
She was geared a thought too high perhaps; she was trained a
trifle fine;
But she had the grand reach forward! I never saw such a line!
Smooth-bored, clean run, from her fiddle head with its dainty ear
half-cock,
Hard-bit, _pur sang_, from her overhang to the heel of her off
hind sock.
Sir Robert he walked beside me as I worked her down to the mark;
"There's money on this, my lad," said he, "and most of 'em's
running dark;
But ease the sheet if you're bunkered, and pack the scrummages
tight,
And use your slide at the distance, and we'll drink to your health
to-night!"
But I bent and tightened my stretcher. Said I to myself, said I--
"John Jones, this here is the Jubilee Cup, and you have to do or
die."
And the words weren't hardly spoken when the umpire shouted
"Play!"
And we all kicked off from the Gasworks End with a "Yoicks!" and a
"Gone Away!"
And at first I thought of nothing, as the clay flew by in lumps,
But stuck to the old Ruy Lopez, and wondered who'd call for trumps,
And luffed her close to the cushion, and watched each one as it
broke,
And in triple file up the Rowley Mile we went like a trail of smoke.
The Lascar made the running but he didn't amount to much,
For old Oom Paul was quick on the ball, and headed it back to touch;
And the whole first flight led off with the right as The Saint
took up the pace,
And drove it clean to the putting green and trumped it there with
an ace.
John Roberts had given a miss in baulk, but Villa cleared with a
punt;
And keeping her service hard and low the Meteor forged to the front;
With Romany Rye to windward at dormy and two to play,
And Yale close up--but a Jubilee Cup isn't run for every day.
We laid our course for the Warner--I tell you the pace was hot!
And again off Tattenham Corner a blanket covered the lot.
Check side! Check side! now steer her wide! and barely an inch of
room,
With The Lascar's tail over our lee rail and brushing Leander's
boom.
We were running as strong as ever--eight knots--but it couldn't
last;
For the spray and the bails were flying, the whole field tailing
fast;
And the Portland Colt had shot his bolt, and Yale was bumped at
the Doves,
And The Lascar resigned to Steinitz, stalemated in fifteen moves.
It was bellows to mend with Roberts--starred three for a penalty
kick:
But he chalked his cue and gave 'em the butt, and Oom Paul marked
the trick--
"Offside--No Ball--and at fourteen all! Mark Cock! and two for his
nob!"
When W.G. ran clean through his lee and beat him twice with a lob.
He yorked him twice on a crumbling pitch and wiped his eye with a
brace,
But his guy-rope split with the strain of it and he dropped back
out of the race;
And I drew a bead on the Meteor's lead, and challenging none too
soon,
Bent over and patted her garboard strake, and called upon Wooden
Spoon.
She was all of a shiver forward, the spoondrift thick on her flanks,
But I'd brought her an easy gambit, and nursed her over the banks;
She answered her helm--the darling! and woke up now with a rush,
While the Meteor's jock, he sat like a rock--he knew we rode for
his brush!
There was no one else left in it. The Saint was using his whip,
And Safety Match, with a lofting catch, was pocketed deep at slip;
And young Ben Bolt with his niblick took miss at Leander's lunge,
But topped the net with the ricochet, and Steinitz threw up the
sponge.
But none of the lot could stop the rot--nay, don't ask _me_ to stop!
The villa had called for lemons, Oom Paul had taken his drop,
And both were kicking the referee. Poor fellow! he done his best;
But, being in doubt, he'd ruled them out--which he always did when
pressed.
So, inch by inch, I tightened the winch, and chucked the sandbags
out--
I heard the nursery cannons pop, I heard the bookies shout:
"The Meteor wins!" "No, Wooden Spoon!" "Check!" "Vantage!"
"Leg Before!"
"Last Lap!" "Pass Nap!" At his saddle-flap I put up the helm and
wore.
You may overlap at the saddle-flap, and yet be loo'd on the tape:
And it all depends upon changing ends, how a seven-year-old will
shape;
It was tack and tack to the Lepe and back--a fair ding-dong to the
Ridge,
And he led by his forward canvas yet as we shot 'neath Hammersmith
Bridge.
He led by his forward canvas--he led from his strongest suit--
But along we went on a roaring scent, and at Fawley I gained a foot.
He fisted off with his jigger, and gave me his wash--too late!
Deuce--Vantage--Check! By neck and neck we rounded into the
straight.
I could hear the "Conquering 'Ero" a-crashing on Godfrey's band,
And my hopes fell sudden to zero, just there, with the race in
hand--
In sight of the Turf's Blue Ribbon, in sight of the umpire's tape,
As I felt the tack of her spinnaker c-rack! as I heard the steam
escape!
Had I lost at that awful juncture my presence of mind? ... but no!
I leaned and felt for the puncture, and plugged it there with my
toe....
Hand over hand by the Members' Stand I lifted and eased her up,
Shot--clean and fair--to the crossbar there, and landed the
Jubilee Cup!
"The odd by a head, and leg before," so the Judge he gave the word:
And the umpire shouted "Over!" but I neither spoke nor stirred.
They crowded round: for there on the ground I lay in a dead-cold
swoon,
Pitched neck and crop on the turf atop of my beautiful Wooden Spoon.
Her dewlap tire was punctured, her bearings all red hot;
She'd a lolling tongue, and her bowsprit sprung, and her running
gear in a knot;
And amid the sobs of her backers, Sir Robert loosened her girth
And led her away to the knacker's. She
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