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+Project Gutenberg V4 The Home Book of Verse, by Burton Stevenson
+#4 in our 8 volume Home Book of Verse series by Stevenson
+
+V4 and V5 correspond to the two halves of "Part IV" as they were
+in two volume editions of over 3700 pages:  half is in each Vol.
+
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+Title:  The Home Book of Verse, Volume 4
+
+Author:  Burton Egbert Stevenson
+
+May, 2001  [Etext #2622]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg V4 The Home Book of Verse, by Burton Stevenson
+******This file should be named 4hbov10.txt or 4hbov10.zip******
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+
+The Home Book of Verse, Volume 4
+
+by Burton Egbert Stevenson
+
+
+
+
+Contents of Volume I of the two volume set are in our Volume 1
+This includes contents of Volumes 1 through 4 of our Etext editions.
+
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+
+
+
+
+FAMILIAR VERSE, AND POEMS 
+HUMOROUS AND SATIRIC
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BALLADE OF THE PRIMITIVE JEST
+"What did the dark-haired Iberian laugh at before the tall blonde
+Aryan drove him into the corners of Europe?" - Brander Matthews
+
+I am an ancient Jest!
+Palaeolithic man
+In his arboreal nest
+The sparks of fun would fan;
+My outline did he plan,
+And laughed like one possessed,
+'Twas thus my course began,
+I am a Merry Jest!
+
+I am an early Jest!
+Man delved, and built, and span;
+Then wandered South and West
+The peoples Aryan,
+I journeyed in their van;
+The Semites, too, confessed, -
+From Beersheba to Dan, -
+I am a Merry Jest!
+
+I am an ancient Jest!
+Through all the human clan,
+Red, black, white, free, oppressed,
+Hilarious I ran!
+I'm found in Lucian,
+In Poggio, and the rest,
+I'm dear to Moll and Nan!
+I am a Merry Jest!
+
+ENVOY
+Prince, you may storm and ban -
+Joe Millers are a pest,
+Suppress me if you can!
+I am a Merry Jest!
+
+Andrew Lang [1844-1912]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE KINDLY MUSE
+
+
+
+TIME TO BE WISE
+
+Yes; I write verses now and then,
+But blunt and flaccid is my pen,
+No longer talked of by young men
+As rather clever:
+In the last quarter are my eyes,
+You see it by their form and size;
+Is it not time then to be wise?
+Or now or never.
+
+Fairest that ever sprang from Eve!
+While Time allows the short reprieve,
+Just look at me! would you believe
+'Twas once a lover?
+I cannot clear the five-bar gate;
+But, trying first its timber's state,
+Climb stiffly up, take breath, and wait
+To trundle over.
+
+Through gallopade I cannot swing
+The entangling blooms of Beauty's spring:
+I cannot say the tender thing,
+Be't true or false,
+And am beginning to opine
+Those girls are only half-divine
+Whose waists yon wicked boys entwine
+In giddy waltz.
+
+I fear that arm above that shoulder;
+I wish them wiser, graver, older,
+Sedater, and no harm if colder,
+And panting less.
+Ah! people were not half so wild
+In former days, when, starchly mild,
+Upon her high-heeled Essex smiled
+The brave Queen Bess.
+
+Walter Savage Landor [1775-1864]
+
+
+UNDER THE LINDENS
+
+Under the lindens lately sat
+A couple, and no more, in chat;
+I wondered what they would be at
+Under the lindens.
+
+I saw four eyes and four lips meet,
+I heard the words, "How sweet! how sweet!"
+Had then the Fairies given a treat
+Under the lindens?
+
+I pondered long and could not tell
+What dainty pleased them both so well:
+Bees! bees! was it your hydromel
+Under the lindens?
+
+Walter Savage Landor [1775-1864]
+
+
+ADVICE
+
+To write as your sweet mother does
+Is all you wish to do.
+Play, sing, and smile for others, Rose!
+Let others write for you.
+
+Or mount again your Dartmoor gray,
+And I will walk beside,
+Until we reach that quiet bay
+Which only hears the tide.
+
+Then wave at me your pencil, then
+At distance bid me stand,
+Before the caverned cliff, again
+The creature of your hand.
+
+And bid me then go past the nook
+To sketch me less in size;
+There are but few content to look
+So little in your eyes.
+
+Delight us with the gifts you have,
+And wish for none beyond:
+To some be gay, to some be grave,
+To one (blest youth!) be fond.
+
+Pleasures there are how close to Pain
+And better unpossessed!
+Let poetry's too throbbing vein
+Lie quiet in your breast.
+
+Walter Savage Landor [1775-1864]
+
+
+TO FANNY
+
+Never mind how the pedagogue proses,
+You want not antiquity's stamp;
+The lip, that such fragrance discloses,
+Oh! never should smell of the lamp.
+
+Old Chloe, whose withering kisses
+Have long set the Loves at defiance,
+Now, done with the science of blisses,
+May fly to the blisses of science!
+
+Young Sappho, for want of employments,
+Alone o'er her Ovid may melt,
+Condemned but to read of enjoyments,
+Which wiser Corinna had felt.
+
+But for you to be buried in books -
+Oh, Fanny! they're pitiful sages;
+Who could not in one of your looks
+Read more than in millions of pages!
+
+Astronomy finds in your eyes
+Better light than she studies above,
+And Music must borrow your sighs
+As the melody fittest for Love.
+
+In Ethics - 'tis you that can check,
+In a minute, their doubts and their quarrels;
+Oh! show but that mole on your neck,
+And 'twill soon put an end to their morals.
+
+Your Arithmetic only can trip
+When to kiss and to count you endeavor;
+But eloquence glows on your lip
+When you swear that you'll love me for ever.
+
+Thus you see what a brilliant alliance
+Of arts is assembled in you, -
+A course of more exquisite science
+Man never need wish to pursue.
+
+And, oh! - if a Fellow like me
+May confer a diploma of hearts,
+With my lip thus I seal your degree,
+My divine little Mistress of Arts!
+
+Thomas Moore [1779-1852]
+
+
+"I'D BE A BUTTERFLY"
+
+I'd be a Butterfly born in a bower,
+Where roses and lilies and violets meet;
+Roving for ever from flower to flower,
+And kissing all buds that are pretty and sweet!
+I'd never languish for wealth, or for power,
+I'd never sigh to see slaves at my feet:
+I'd be a Butterfly born in a bower,
+Kissing all buds that are pretty and sweet.
+
+O could I pilfer the wand of a fairy,
+I'd have a pair of those beautiful wings;
+Their summer days' ramble is sportive and airy,
+They sleep in a rose when the nightingale sings.
+Those who have wealth must be watchful and wary;
+Power, alas! naught but misery brings!
+I'd be a Butterfly, sportive and airy,
+Rocked in a rose when the nightingale sings!
+
+What, though you tell me each gay little rover
+Shrinks from the breath of the first autumn day:
+Surely 'tis better when summer is over
+To die when all fair things are fading away.
+Some in life's winter may toil to discover
+Means of procuring a weary delay -
+I'd be a butterfly; living, a rover,
+Dying when fair things are fading away!
+
+Thomas Haynes Bayly [1797-1839]
+
+
+"I'M NOT A SINGLE MAN"
+Lines Written In A Young Lady's Album
+
+A pretty task, Miss S---, to ask
+A Benedictine pen,
+That cannot quite at freedom write
+Like those of other men.
+No lover's plaint my Muse must paint
+To fill this page's span,
+But be correct and recollect
+I'm not a single man. 
+
+Pray only think, for pen and ink
+How hard to get along,
+That may not turn on words that burn,
+Or Love, the life of song!
+Nine Muses, if I chooses, I
+May woo all in a clan;
+But one Miss S--- I daren't address -
+I'm not a single man.
+
+Scribblers unwed, with little head,
+May eke it out with heart
+And in their lays it often plays
+A rare first-fiddle part.
+They make a kiss to rhyme with bliss,
+But if I so began,
+I have my fears about my ears -
+I'm not a single man.
+
+Upon your cheek I may not speak,
+Nor on your lip be warm,
+I must be wise about your eyes,
+And formal with your form;
+Of all that sort of thing, in short, 
+On T. H. Bayly's plan,
+I must not twine a single line -
+I'm not a single man.
+
+A watchman's part compels my heart
+To keep you off its beat,
+And I might dare as soon to swear
+At you, as at your feet.
+I can't expire in passion's fire
+As other poets can -
+My life (she's by) won't let me die -
+I'm not a single man.
+
+Shut out from love, denied a dove,
+Forbidden bow and dart;
+Without a groan to call my own,
+With neither hand nor heart;
+To Hymen vowed, and not allowed
+To flirt e'en with your fan,
+Here end, as just a friend, I must -
+I'm not a single man.
+
+Thomas Hood [1799-1845]
+
+
+TO ---
+
+We met but in one giddy dance,
+Good-night joined hands with greeting;
+And twenty thousand things may chance
+Before our second meeting;
+For oh! I have been often told
+That all the world grows older,
+And hearts and hopes to-day so cold,
+To-morrow must be colder.
+
+If I have never touched the string
+Beneath your chamber, dear one,
+And never said one civil thing
+When you were by to hear one, -
+If I have made no rhymes about
+Those looks which conquer Stoics,
+And heard those angel tones, without
+One fit of fair heroics, -
+
+Yet do not, though the world's cold school
+Some bitter truths has taught me,
+Oh, do not deem me quite the fool
+Which wiser friends have thought me!
+There is one charm I still could feel,
+If no one laughed at feeling;
+One dream my lute could still reveal, -
+If it were worth revealing.
+
+But Folly little cares what name
+Of friend or foe she handles, 
+When merriment directs the game,
+And midnight dims the candles;
+I know that Folly's breath is weak
+And would not stir a feather;
+But yet I would not have her speak
+Your name and mine together.
+
+Oh no! this life is dark and bright,
+Half rapture and half sorrow;
+My heart is very full to-night,
+My cup shall be to-morrow!
+But they shall never know from me,
+On any one condition,
+Whose health made bright my Burgundy,
+Whose beauty was my vision!
+
+Winthrop Mackworth Praed [1802-1839]
+
+
+THE VICAR
+
+Some years ago, ere Time and Taste
+Had turned our parish topsy-turvy,
+When Darnel Park was Darnel Waste,
+And roads as little known as scurvy,
+The man who lost his way between
+St. Mary's Hill and Sandy Thicket,
+Was always shown across the Green,
+And guided to the Parson's wicket.
+
+Back flew the bolt of lissom lath;
+Fair Margaret, in her tidy kirtle,
+Led the lorn traveller up the path
+Through clean-clipt rows of box and myrtle;
+And Don and Sancho, Tramp and Tray,
+Upon the parlor steps collected,
+Wagged all their tails, and seemed to say,
+"Our master knows you; you're expected!"
+
+Up rose the Reverend Doctor Brown,
+Up rose the Doctor's "winsome marrow";
+The lady laid her knitting down,
+Her husband clasped his ponderous Barrow;
+Whate'er the stranger's caste or creed,
+Pundit or papist, saint or sinner,
+He found a stable for his steed,
+And welcome for himself, and dinner.
+
+If, when he reached his journey's end,
+And warmed himself in court or college,
+He had not gained an honest friend,
+And twenty curious scraps of knowledge; -
+If he departed as he came,
+With no new light on love or liquor, -
+Good sooth, the traveller was to blame,
+And not the Vicarage, nor the Vicar.
+
+His talk was like a stream which runs
+With rapid change from rocks to roses;
+It slipped from politics to puns;
+It passed from Mahomet to Moses;
+Beginning with the laws which keep
+The planets in their radiant courses,
+And ending with some precept deep
+For dressing eels or shoeing horses.
+
+He was a shrewd and sound divine,
+Of loud Dissent the mortal terror;
+And when, by dint of page and line,
+He 'stablished Truth, or startled Error,
+The Baptist found him far too deep,
+The Deist sighed with saving sorrow,
+And the lean Levite went to sleep
+And dreamed of tasting pork to-morrow.
+
+His sermon never said or showed
+That Earth is foul, that Heaven is gracious,
+Without refreshment on the road
+From Jerome, or from Athanasius;
+And sure a righteous zeal inspired
+The hand and head that penned and planned them,
+For all who understood, admired,
+And some who did not understand them.
+
+He wrote, too, in a quiet way,
+Small treatises, and smaller verses,
+And sage remarks on chalk and clay,
+And hints to noble lords and nurses;
+True histories of last year's ghost;
+Lines to a ringlet or a turban;
+And trifles to the Morning Post,
+And nothings for Sylvanus Urban.
+
+He did not think all mischief fair,
+Although he had a knack of joking;
+He did not make himself a bear,
+Although he had a taste for smoking;
+And when religious sects ran mad,
+He held, in spite of all his learning,
+That if a man's belief is bad,
+It will not be improved by burning.
+
+And he was kind, and loved to sit
+In the low hut or garnished cottage,
+And praise the farmer's homely wit,
+And share the widow's homelier pottage.
+At his approach complaint grew mild,
+And when his hand unbarred the shutter,
+The clammy lips of Fever smiled
+The welcome which they could not utter.
+
+He always had a tale for me
+Of Julius Caesar or of Venus;
+From him I learned the rule of three,
+Cat's-cradle, leap-frog, and Quae genus.
+I used to singe his powdered wig,
+To steal the staff he put such trust in,
+And make the puppy dance a jig
+When he began to quote Augustine.
+
+Alack, the change!  In vain I look
+For haunts in which my boyhood trifled;
+The level lawn, the trickling brook,
+The trees I climbed, the beds I rifled.
+The church is larger than before,
+You reach it by a carriage entry:
+It holds three hundred people more,
+And pews are fitted up for gentry.
+
+Sit in the Vicar's seat; you'll hear
+The doctrine of a gentle Johnian,
+Whose hand is white, whose voice is clear,
+Whose phrase is very Ciceronian.
+Where is the old man laid?  Look down,
+And construe on the slab before you:
+"Hic jacet Gulielmus Brown,
+Vir nulla non donandus lauru."
+
+Winthrop Mackworth Praed [1802-1839]
+
+
+THE BELLE OF THE BALL-ROOM
+
+Years, years ago, ere yet my dreams
+Had been of being wise or witty;
+Ere I had done with writing themes,
+Or yawned o'er this infernal Chitty; -
+Years, years ago, while all my joy
+Were in my fowling-piece and filly;
+In short, while I was yet a boy,
+I fell in love with Laura Lilly.
+
+I saw her at the County Ball;
+There, when the sounds of flute and fiddle
+Gave signal sweet in that old hall
+Of hands across and down the middle,
+Hers was the subtlest spell by far
+Of all that sets young hearts romancing:
+She was our queen, our rose, our star;
+And then she danced, - oh, heaven, her dancing!
+
+Dark was her hair, her hand was white;
+Her voice was exquisitely tender;
+Her eyes were full of liquid light;
+I never saw a waist so slender;
+Her every look, her every smile,
+Shot right and left a score of arrows;
+I thought 'twas Venus from her isle,
+And wondered where she'd left her sparrows.
+
+She talked of politics or prayers, -
+Of Southey's prose, or Wordsworth's sonnets,
+Of danglers or of dancing bears,
+Of battles, or the last new bonnets;
+By candle-light, at twelve o'clock,
+To me it mattered not a tittle,
+If those bright lips had quoted Locke,
+I might have thought they murmured Little.
+
+Through sunny May, through sultry June,
+I loved her with a love eternal;
+I spoke her praises to the moon,
+I wrote them to the Sunday Journal. 
+My mother laughed; I soon found out
+That ancient ladies have no feeling:
+My father frowned; but how should gout
+See any happiness in kneeling?
+
+She was the daughter of a dean,
+Rich, fat, and rather apoplectic;
+She had one brother just thirteen,
+Whose color was extremely hectic;
+Her grandmother, for many a year,
+Had fed the parish with her bounty;
+Her second cousin was a peer,
+And lord-lieutenant of the county.
+
+But titles and the three-per-cents,
+And mortgages, and great relations,
+And India bonds, and tithes and rents,
+Oh, what are they to love's sensations?
+Black eyes, fair forehead, clustering locks, -
+Such wealth, such honors, Cupid chooses;
+He cares as little for the stocks,
+As Baron Rothschild for the Muses.
+
+She sketched; the vale, the wood, the beach,
+Grew lovelier from her pencil's shading;
+She botanized; I envied each
+Young blossom in her boudoir fading:
+She warbled Handel; it was grand, -
+She made the Catilina jealous;
+She touched the organ; I could stand
+For hours and hours to blow the bellows.
+
+She kept an album, too, at home,
+Well filled with all an album's glories;
+Paintings of butterflies and Rome,
+Patterns for trimmings, Persian stories,
+Soft songs to Julia's cockatoo,
+Fierce odes to famine and to slaughter,
+And autographs of Prince Leboo,
+And recipes for elder-water.
+
+And she was flattered, worshipped, bored;
+Her steps were watched, her dress was noted;
+Her poodle-dog was quite adored;
+Her sayings were extremely quoted.
+She laughed, and every heart was glad,
+As if the taxes were abolished;
+She frowned, and every took was sad,
+As if the opera were demolished.
+
+She smiled on many just for fun, -
+I knew that there was nothing in it;
+I was the first, the only one
+Her heart had thought of for a minute.
+I knew it, for she told me so,
+In phrase which was divinely moulded;
+She wrote a charming hand, and oh,
+How sweetly all her notes were folded!
+
+Our love was like most other loves, -
+A little glow, a little shiver,
+A rosebud and a pair of gloves,
+And "Fly Not Yet," upon the river;
+Some jealousy of some one's heir,
+Some hopes of dying broken-hearted;
+A miniature, a lock of hair,
+The usual vows, - and then we parted.
+
+We parted: months and years rolled by;
+We met again four summers after.
+Our parting was all sob and sigh, -
+Our meeting was all mirth and laughter;
+For, in my heart's most secret cell,
+There had been many other lodgers;
+And she was not the ball-room's belle,
+But only Mrs. - Something - Rogers.
+
+Winthrop Mackworth Praed [1802-1839]
+
+
+THE FINE OLD ENGLISH GENTLEMAN
+
+I'll sing you a good old song,
+Made by a good old pate,
+Of a fine old English gentleman
+Who had an old estate,
+And who kept up his old mansion
+At a bountiful old rate;
+With a good old porter to relieve
+The old poor at his gate,
+Like a fine old English gentleman
+All of the olden time.
+
+His hall so old was hung around
+With pikes and guns and bows,
+And swords, and good old bucklers,
+That had stood some tough old blows;
+'Twas there "his worship" held his state
+In doublet and trunk hose,
+And quaffed his cup of good old sack,
+To warm his good old nose,
+Like a fine old English gentleman
+All of the olden time.
+
+When winter's cold brought frost and snow,
+He opened house to all;
+And though threescore and ten his years,
+He featly led the ball;
+Nor was the houseless wanderer
+E'er driven from his hall;
+For while he feasted all the great,
+He ne'er forgot the small;
+Like a fine old English gentleman
+All of the olden time.
+
+But time, though old, is strong in flight,
+And years rolled swiftly by;
+And Autumn's falling leaves proclaimed
+This good old man must die!
+He laid him down right tranquilly,
+Gave up life's latest sigh;
+And mournful stillness reigned around,
+And tears bedewed each eye,
+For this fine old English gentleman
+All of the olden time.
+
+Now surely this is better far
+Than all the new parade
+Of theaters and fancy balls,
+"At home" and masquerade:
+And much more economical,
+For all his bills were paid,
+Then leave your new vagaries quite,
+And take up the old trade
+Of a fine old English gentleman,
+All of the olden time.
+
+Unknown
+
+
+A TERNARIE OF LITTLES, UPON A PIPKIN OF JELLY SENT TO A LADY
+
+A Little Saint best fits a little Shrine,
+A little Prop best fits a little Vine,
+As my small Cruse best fits my little Wine.
+
+A little Seed best fits a little Soil,
+A little Trade best fits a little Toil,
+As my small Jar best fits my little Oil.
+
+A little Bin best fits a little Bread,
+A little Garland fits a little Head,
+As my small Stuff best fits my little Shed.
+
+A little Hearth best fits a little Fire,
+A little Chapel fits a little Quire,
+As my small Bell best fits my little Spire.
+
+A little Stream best fits a little Boat,
+A little Lead best fits a little Float,
+As my small Pipe best fits my little Note.
+
+A little Meat best fits a little Belly,
+As sweetly, lady, give me leave to tell ye,
+This little Pipkin fits this little Jelly.
+
+Robert Herrick [1591-1674]
+
+
+CHIVALRY AT A DISCOUNT
+
+Fair cousin mine! the golden days
+Of old romance are over;
+And minstrels now care naught for bays,
+Nor damsels for a lover;
+And hearts are cold, and lips are mute
+That kindled once with passion,
+And now we've neither lance nor lute,
+And tilting's out of fashion.
+
+Yet weeping Beauty mourns the time
+When Love found words in flowers;
+When softest test sighs were breathed in rhyme,
+And sweetest songs in bowers;
+Now wedlock is a sober thing -
+No more of chains or forges! -
+A plain young man - a plain gold ring -
+The curate - and St. George's.
+
+Then every cross-bow had a string,
+And every heart a fetter;
+And making love was quite the thing,
+And making verses better;
+And maiden-aunts were never seen,
+And gallant beaux were plenty;
+And lasses married at sixteen,
+And died at one-and-twenty.
+
+Then hawking was a noble sport,
+And chess a pretty science;
+And huntsmen learned to blow a morte,
+And heralds a defiance;
+And knights and spearmen showed their might,
+And timid hinds took warning;
+And hypocras was warmed at night,
+And coursers in the morning.
+
+Then plumes and pennons were prepared,
+And patron-saints were lauded;
+And noble deeds were bravely dared,
+And noble dames applauded;
+And Beauty played the leech's part,
+And wounds were healed with syrup;
+And warriors sometimes lost a heart,
+But never lost a stirrup.
+
+Then there was no such thing as Fear,
+And no such word as Reason;
+And Faith was like a pointed spear,
+And Fickleness was treason;
+And hearts were soft, though blows were hard;
+But when the fight was over,
+A brimming goblet cheered the board,
+His Lady's smile the lover.
+
+Ay, those were golden days!  The moon
+Had then her true adorers;
+And there were lyres and lutes in tune,
+And no such thing as snorers;
+And lovers swam, and held at naught
+Streams broader than the Mersey;
+And fifty thousand would have fought
+For a smile from Lady Jersey.
+
+Then people wore an iron vest,
+And bad no use for tailors;
+And the artizans who lived the best
+Were armorers and nailers;
+And steel was measured by the ell
+And trousers lined with leather;
+And jesters wore a cap and bell,
+And knights a cap and feather.
+
+Then single folks might live at ease,
+And married ones might sever;
+Uncommon doctors had their fees,
+But Doctor's Commons never;
+O! had we in those times been bred,
+Fair cousin, for thy glances,
+Instead of breaking Priscian's head,
+I had been breaking lances!
+
+Edward Fitzgerald [1809-1883]
+
+
+THE BALLAD OF BOUILLABAISSE
+
+A street there is in Paris famous,
+For which no rhyme our language yields,
+Rue Neuve des Petits Champs its name is -
+The New Street of the Little Fields;
+And there's an inn, not rich and splendid,
+But still in comfortable case -
+The which in youth I oft attended,
+To eat a bowl of Bouillabaisse.
+
+This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is -
+A sort of soup, or broth, or brew,
+Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes,
+That Greenwich never could outdo;
+Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffern,
+Soles, onions, garlic, roach, and dace:
+All these you eat at Terre's tavern,
+In that one dish of Bouillabaisse.
+
+Indeed, a rich and savory stew 'tis;
+And true philosophers, methinks,
+Who love all sorts of natural beauties,
+Should love good victuals and good drinks.
+And Cordelier or Benedictine
+Might gladly, sure, his lot embrace,
+Nor find a fast-day too afflicting,
+Which served him up a Bouillabaisse.
+
+I wonder if the house still there is? 
+Yes, here the lamp is as before;
+The smiling, red-cheeked ecaillere is
+Still opening oysters at the door.
+Is Terre still alive and able?
+I recollect his droll grimace;
+He'd come and smile before your table
+And hope you liked your Bouillabaisse.
+
+We enter; nothing's changed or older.
+"How's Monsieur Terre, waiter, pray?"
+The waiter stares and shrugs his shoulder; -
+"Monsieur is dead this many a day."
+"It is the lot of saint and sinner.
+So honest Terre's run his race!"
+"What will Monsieur require for dinner?"
+"Say, do you still cook Bouillabaisse?"
+
+"Oh, oui, Monsieur," 's the waiter's answer;
+"Quel vin Monsieur desire-t-il?"
+"Tell me a good one." "That I can, Sir; 
+The Chambertin with yellow seal."
+"So Terre's gone," I say, and sink in
+My old accustomed corner-place;
+"He's done with feasting and with drinking,
+With Burgundy and Bouillabaisse."
+
+My old accustomed corner here is, -
+The table still is in the nook;
+Ah! vanished many a busy year is,
+This well-known chair since last I took,
+When first I saw ye, cari luoghi,
+I'd scarce a beard upon my face,
+And now a grizzled, grim old fogy,
+I sit and wait for Bouillabaisse.
+
+Where are you, old companions trusty
+Of early days here met to dine?
+Come, waiter! quick, a flagon crusty -
+I'll pledge them in the good old wine.
+The kind old voices and old faces
+My memory can quick retrace;
+Around the board they take their places,
+And share the wine and Bouillabaisse.
+
+There's Jack has made a wondrous marriage;
+There's laughing Tom is laughing yet;
+There's brave Augustus drives his carriage;
+There's poor old Fred in the Gazette;
+On James's head the grass is growing:
+Good Lord! the world has wagged apace
+Since here we set the Claret flowing,
+And drank, and ate the Bouillabaisse.
+
+Ah me! how quick the days are flitting!
+I mind me of a time that's gone,
+When here I'd sit, as now I'm sitting,
+In this same place - but not alone.
+A fair young form was nestled near me,
+A dear, dear face looked fondly up,
+And sweetly spoke and smiled to cheer me.
+- There's no one now to share my cup. . . .
+
+I drink it as the Fates ordain it.
+Come, fill it, and have done with rhymes;
+Fill up the lonely glass, and drain it
+In memory of dear old times.
+Welcome the wine, whate'er the seal is;
+And sit you down and say your grace
+With thankful heart, whate'er the meal is.
+- Here comes the smoking Bouillabaisse!
+
+William Makepeace Thackeray [1811-1863]
+
+
+TO MY GRANDMOTHER
+Suggested By A Picture By Mr. Romney
+
+Under the elm a rustic seat
+Was merriest Susan's pet retreat
+To merry-make
+
+This Relative of mine
+Was she seventy-and-nine
+When she died?
+By the canvas may be seen
+How she looked at seventeen,
+As a Bride.
+
+Beneath a summer tree
+Her maiden reverie
+Has a charm;
+Her ringlets are in taste;
+What an arm! and what a waist
+For an arm!
+
+With her bridal-wreath, bouquet,
+Lace farthingale, and gay
+Falbala, -
+If Romney's touch be true,
+What a lucky dog were you,
+Grandpapa!
+
+Her lips are sweet as love;
+They are parting!  Do they move?
+Are they dumb?
+Her eyes are blue, and beam
+Beseechingly, and seem
+To say, "Come!"
+
+What funny fancy slips
+From atween these cherry lips?
+Whisper me,
+Fair Sorceress in paint,
+What canon says I mayn't
+Marry thee?
+
+That good-for-nothing Time
+Has a confidence sublime!
+When I first
+Saw this Lady, in my youth,
+Her winters had, forsooth,
+Done their worst.
+
+Her locks, as white as snow, 
+Once shamed the swarthy crow;
+By-and-by
+That fowl's avenging sprite
+Set his cruel foot for spite
+Near her eye.
+
+Her rounded form was lean,
+And her silk was bombazine:
+Well I wot
+With her needles would she sit,
+And for hours would she knit. -
+Would she not?
+
+Ah perishable clay!
+Her charms had dropped away
+One by one:
+But if she heaved a sigh
+With a burden, it was, "Thy
+Will be done."
+
+In travail, as in tears,
+With the fardel of her years
+Overpressed,
+In mercy she was borne
+Where the weary and the worn
+Are at rest.
+
+Oh, if you now are there,
+And sweet as once you were,
+Grandmamma,
+This nether world agrees
+You'll all the better please
+Grandpapa.
+
+Frederick Locker-Lampson [1821-1895]
+
+
+MY MISTRESS'S BOOTS
+
+She has dancing eyes and ruby lips,
+Delightful boots - and away she skips
+
+They nearly strike me dumb, -
+I tremble when they come
+Pit-a-pat:
+This palpitation means
+These Boots are Geraldine's -
+Think of that!
+
+O, where did hunter win
+So delicate a skin
+For her feet?
+You lucky little kid,
+You perished, so you did,
+For my Sweet.
+
+The fairy stitching gleams
+On the sides, and in the seams,
+And reveals
+That the Pixies were the wags
+Who tipped these funny tags,
+And these heels.
+
+What soles to charm an elf! -
+Had Crusoe, sick of self,
+Chanced to view
+One printed near the tide,
+O, how hard he would have tried
+For the two!
+
+For Gerry's debonair,
+And innocent and fair
+As a rose;
+She's an Angel in a frock, -
+She's an Angel with a clock
+To her hose!
+
+The simpletons who squeeze
+Their pretty toes to please
+Mandarins,
+Would positively flinch
+From venturing to pinch
+Geraldine's.
+
+Cinderella's lefts and rights
+To Geraldine's were frights:
+And I trow
+The Damsel, deftly shod,
+Has dutifully trod
+Until now.
+
+Come, Gerry, since it suits
+Such a pretty Puss (in Boots)
+These to don,
+Set your dainty hand awhile
+On my shoulder, Dear, and I'll
+Put them on.
+
+Frederick Locker-Lampson [1821-1895]
+
+
+A GARDEN LYRIC
+Geraldine And I
+
+Dite, Damasippe, deaeque
+Verum ob consilium donent tonsore.
+
+We have loitered and laughed in the flowery croft,
+We have met under wintry skies;
+Her voice is the dearest voice, and soft
+Is the light in her wistful eyes;
+It is bliss in the silent woods, among
+Gay crowds, or in any place,
+To mould her mind, to gaze in her young
+Confiding face.
+
+For ever may roses divinely blow,
+And wine-dark pansies charm
+By that prim box path where I felt the glow
+Of her dimpled, trusting arm,
+And the sweep of her silk as she turned and smiled
+A smile as pure as her pearls;
+The breeze was in love with the darling Child,
+And coaxed her curls.
+
+She showed me her ferns and woodbine sprays,
+Foxglove and jasmine stars,
+A mist of blue in the beds, a blaze
+Of red in the celadon jars:
+And velvety bees in convolvulus bells,
+And roses of bountiful Spring.
+But I said - "Though roses and bees have spells,
+They have thorn, and sting."
+
+She showed me ripe peaches behind a net
+As fine as her veil, and fat
+Goldfish a-gape, who lazily met
+For her crumbs - I grudged them that!
+A squirrel, some rabbits with long lop ears,
+And guinea-pigs, tortoise-shell - wee;
+And I told her that eloquent truth inheres
+In all we see.
+
+I lifted her doe by its lops, quoth I,
+"Even here deep meaning lies, -
+Why have squirrels these ample tails, and why
+Have rabbits these prominent eyes?"
+She smiled and said, as she twirled her veil,
+"For some nice little cause, no doubt -
+If you lift a guinea-pig up by the tail
+His eyes drop out!"
+
+Frederick Locker Lampson [1821-1895]
+
+
+MRS. SMITH
+
+Heigh-ho! they're wed. The cards are dealt,
+Our frolic games are o'er;
+I've laughed, and fooled, and loved. I've felt -
+As I shall feel no more!
+Yon little thatch is where she lives,
+Yon spire is where she met me; -
+I think that if she quite forgives,
+She cannot quite forget me.
+
+Last year I trod these fields with Di, -
+Fields fresh with clover and with rye;
+They now seem arid:
+Then Di was fair and single; how
+Unfair it seems on me, for now
+Di's fair, - and married!
+
+A blissful swain, - I scorned the song
+Which tells us though young Love is strong,
+The Fates are stronger:
+Then breezes blew a boon to men,
+Then buttercups were bright, and then
+The grass was longer.
+
+That day I saw, and much esteemed,
+Di's ankles, that the clover seemed
+Inclined to smother:
+It twitched, and soon untied (for fun)
+The ribbons of her shoes, first one,
+And then the other.
+
+I'm told that virgins augur some
+Misfortune if their shoe-strings come
+To grief on Friday:
+And so did Di, - and then her pride
+Decreed that shoe-strings so untied,
+Are "so untidy!"
+
+Of course I knelt; with fingers deft
+I tied the right, and tied the left:
+Says Di, "This stubble
+Is very stupid! - as I live
+I'm quite ashamed! - I'm shocked to give
+You so much trouble!"
+
+For answer I was fain to sink
+To what we all would say and think
+Were Beauty present:
+"Don't mention such a simple act -
+A trouble? not the least!  In fact
+It's rather pleasant!"
+
+I trust that Love will never tease
+Poor little Di, or prove that he's
+A graceless rover.
+She's happy now as Mrs. Smith -
+But less polite when walking with
+Her chosen lover!
+
+Heigh-ho!  Although no moral clings
+To Di's blue eyes, and sandal strings,
+We had our quarrels.
+I think that Smith is thought an ass, -
+I know that when they walk in grass
+She wears balmorals.
+
+Frederick Locker-Lampson [1821-1895]
+
+
+THE SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD
+
+The characters of great and small
+Come ready made, we can't bespeak one;
+Their sides are many, too, and all
+(Except ourselves) have got a weak one.
+Some sanguine people love for life,
+Some love their hobby till it flings them.
+How many love a pretty wife
+For love of the eclat she brings them! . . .
+
+A little to relieve my mind
+I've thrown off this disjointed chatter,
+But more because I'm disinclined
+To enter on a painful matter:
+Once I was bashful; I'll allow
+I've blushed for words untimely spoken;
+I still am rather shy, and now . . .
+And now the ice is fairly broken.
+
+We all have secrets: you have one
+Which may n't be quite your charming spouse's;
+We all lock up a Skeleton
+In some grim chamber of our houses;
+Familiars who exhaust their days
+And nights in probing where our smart is,
+And who, for all their spiteful ways,
+Are "silent, unassuming Parties."
+
+We hug this Phantom we detest,
+Rarely we let it cross our portals:
+It is a most exacting guest,
+And we are much afflicted mortals.
+Your neighbor Gay, that jovial wight,
+As Dives rich, and brave as Hector,
+Poor Gay steals twenty times a night,
+On shaking knees, to see his Specter.
+
+Old Dives fears a pauper fate,
+So hoarding is his ruling passion: -
+Some gloomy souls anticipate
+A waistcoat, straiter than the fashion!
+She childless pines, that lonely wife,
+And secret tears are bitter shedding;
+Hector may tremble all his life,
+And die, - but not of that he's dreading. . . .
+
+Ah me, the World!  How fast it spins!
+The beldams dance, the caldron bubbles;
+They shriek, they stir it for our sins,
+And we must drain it for our troubles.
+We toil, we groan; the cry for love
+Mounts up from this poor seething city,
+And yet I know we have above
+A Father, infinite in pity.
+
+When Beauty smiles, when Sorrow weeps,
+Where sunbeams play, where shadows darken,
+One inmate of our dwelling keeps
+Its ghastly carnival; but hearken!
+How dry the rattle of the bones!
+That sound was not to make you start meant:
+Stand by!  Your humble servant owns
+The Tenant of this Dark Apartment.
+
+Frederick Locker-Lampson [1821-1895]
+
+
+A TERRIBLE INFANT
+
+I recollect a nurse called Ann,
+Who carried me about the grass,
+And one fine day a fine young man
+Came up, and kissed the pretty lass:
+She did not make the least objection!
+Thinks I, "Aha!
+When I can talk I'll tell Mamma"
+- And that's my earliest recollection.
+
+Frederick Locker-Lampson [1821-1895]
+
+
+COMPANIONS
+A Tale Of A Grandfather
+
+I know not of what we pondered
+Or made pretty pretence to talk,
+As, her hand within mine, we wandered.
+Toward the pool by the lime-tree 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 Fairy 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 yon 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'haps blurred; 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,
+When nobody knew, 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, who on earth we were,
+And what this is all about.
+
+Charles Stuart Calverley [1831-1884]
+
+
+DOROTHY Q
+A Family Portrait
+
+Grandmother's mother: her age, I guess,
+Thirteen summers, or something less:
+Girlish bust, but womanly air;
+Smooth, square forehead with uprolled hair;
+Lips that lover has never kissed;
+Taper fingers and slender wrist;
+Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade;
+So they painted the little maid.
+
+On her hand a parrot green
+Sits unmoving and broods serene.
+Hold up the canvas full in view, -
+Look! there's a rent the light shines through,
+Dark with a century's fringe of dust, -
+That was a Red-Coat's rapier-thrust!
+Such is the tale the lady old,
+Dorothy's daughter's daughter, told.
+
+Who the painter was none may tell, -
+One whose best was not over well;
+Hard and dry, it must be confessed,
+Flat as a rose that has long been pressed;
+Yet in her cheek the hues are bright,
+Dainty colors of red and white,
+And in her slender shape are seen
+Hint and promise of stately mien.
+
+Look not on her with eyes of scorn, -
+Dorothy Q. was a lady born!
+Ay! since the galloping Normans came,
+England's annals have known her name;
+And still to the three-hilled rebel town
+Dear is that ancient name's renown,
+For many a civic wreath they won,
+The youthful sire and the gray-haired son.
+
+O Damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.!
+Strange is the gift that I owe to you;
+Such a gift as never a king
+Save to daughter or son might bring, -
+All my tenure of heart and hand,
+All my title to house and land;
+Mother and sister and child and wife
+And joy and sorrow and death and life!
+
+What if a hundred years ago
+Those close-shut lips had answered No,
+When forth the tremulous question came
+That cost the maiden her Norman name,
+And under the folds that look so still
+The bodice swelled with the bosom's thrill?
+Should I be I, or would it be
+One tenth another, to nine tenths me?
+
+Soft is the breath of a maiden's YES:
+Not the light gossamer stirs with less;
+But never a cable that holds so fast
+Through all the battles of wave and blast,
+And never an echo of speech or song
+That lives in the babbling air so long!
+There were tones in the voice that whispered then
+You may hear to-day in a hundred men.
+
+O lady and lover, how faint and far
+Your images hover, - and here we are
+Solid and stirring in flesh and bone, -
+Edward's and Dorothy's - all their own, -
+A goodly record for Time to show
+Of a syllable spoken so long ago! -
+Shall I bless you, Dorothy, or forgive
+For the tender whisper that bade me live?
+
+It shall be a blessing, my little maid!
+I will heal the stab of the Red-Coat's blade,
+And freshen the gold of the tarnished frame,
+And gild with a rhyme your household name;
+So you shall smile on us brave and bright
+As first you greeted the morning's light,
+And live untroubled by woes and fears
+Through a second youth of a hundred years.
+
+Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-1894]
+
+
+MY AUNT
+
+My aunt! my dear unmarried aunt!
+Long years have o'er her flown;
+Yet still she strains the aching clasp
+That binds her virgin zone;
+I know it hurts her, - though she looks
+As cheerful as she can;
+Her waist is ampler than her life,
+For life is but a span.
+
+My aunt! my poor deluded aunt!
+Her hair is almost gray;
+Why will she train that winter curl
+In such a spring-like way?
+How can she lay her glasses down,
+And say she reads as well,
+When, through a double convex lens,
+She just makes out to spell?
+
+Her father, - grandpapa! forgive
+This erring lip its smiles, -
+Vowed she should make the finest girl
+Within a hundred miles;
+He sent her to a stylish school;
+'Twas in her thirteenth June;
+And with her, as the rules required,
+"Two towels and a spoon."
+
+They braced my aunt against a board,
+To make her straight and tall;
+They laced her up, they starved her down,
+To make her light and small;
+They pinched her feet, they singed her hair,
+They screwed it up with pins; -
+Oh, never mortal suffered more
+In penance for her sins.
+
+So, when my precious aunt was done,
+My grandsire brought her back;
+(By daylight, lest some rabid youth
+Might follow on the track;)
+"Ah!" said my grandsire, as be shook
+Some powder in his pan,
+"What could this lovely creature do
+Against a desperate man!"
+
+Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche,
+Nor bandit cavalcade,
+Tore from the trembling father's arms
+His all-accomplished maid.
+For her how happy had it been!
+And Heaven had spared to me
+To see one sad, ungathered rose
+On my ancestral tree.
+
+Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-1894]
+
+
+THE LAST LEAF
+
+I saw him once before,
+As he passed by the door,
+And again
+The pavement stones resound,
+As he totters o'er the ground
+With his cane.
+
+They say that in his prime,
+Ere the pruning-knife of Time
+Cut him down,
+Not a better man was found
+By the Crier on his round
+Through the town.
+
+But now he walks the streets,
+And he looks at all he meets
+Sad and wan,
+And he shakes his feeble head,
+That it seems as if he said,
+"They are gone."
+
+The mossy marbles rest
+On the lips that he has pressed
+In their bloom,
+And the names he loved to hear
+Have been carved for many a year
+On the tomb.
+
+My grandmamma has said, -
+Poor old lady, she is dead
+Long ago, -
+That he had a Roman nose,
+And his cheek was like a rose
+In the snow:
+
+But now his nose is thin,
+And it rests upon his chin
+Like a staff,
+And a crook is in his back,
+And a melancholy crack
+In his laugh.
+
+I know it is a sin
+For me to sit and grin
+At him here;
+But the old three-cornered hat,
+And the breeches, and all that,
+Are so queer!
+
+And if I should live to be
+The last leaf upon the tree
+In the spring,
+Let them smile, as I do now,
+At the old forsaken bough
+Where I cling.
+
+Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-1894]
+
+
+CONTENTMENT
+"Man wants but little here below"
+
+Little I ask; my wants are few;
+I only wish a hut of stone,
+(A very plain brown stone will do,)
+That I may call my own; -
+And close at hand is such a one,
+In yonder street that fronts the sun.
+
+Plain food is quite enough for me;
+Three courses are as good as ten; -
+If Nature can subsist on three,
+Thank Heaven for three.  Amen!
+I always thought cold victual nice; -
+My choice would be vanilla-ice.
+
+I care not much for gold or land; -
+Give me a mortgage here and there, -
+Some good bank-stock, some note of hand,
+Or trifling railroad share, -
+I only ask that Fortune send
+A little more than I shall spend.
+
+Honors are silly toys, I know,
+And titles are but empty names;
+I would, perhaps, be Plenipo, -
+But only near St. James;
+I'm very sure I should not care
+To fill our Gubernator's chair.
+
+Jewels are baubles; 'tis a sin
+To care for such unfruitful things; -
+One good-sized diamond in a pin, -
+Some, not so large, in rings, -
+A ruby, and a pearl, or so,
+Will do for me; - I laugh at show.
+
+My dame should dress in cheap attire; 
+(Good heavy silks are never dear;) - 
+I own perhaps I might desire
+Some shawls of true Cashmere, -
+Some marrowy crapes of China silk,
+Like wrinkled skins on scalded milk.
+
+I would not have the horse I drive
+So fast that folks must stop and stare;
+An easy gait - two forty-five -
+Suits me; I do not care; -
+Perhaps, far just a single spurt,
+Some seconds less would do no hurt.
+
+Of pictures, I should like to own
+Titians and Raphaels three or four, -
+I love so much their style and tone, -
+One Turner, and no more,
+(A landscape, - foreground golden dirt, -
+The sunshine painted with a squirt.)
+
+Of books but few, - some fifty score
+For daily use, and bound for wear;
+The rest upon an upper floor; -
+Some little luxury there
+Of red morocco's gilded gleam,
+And vellum rich as country cream.
+
+Busts, cameos, gems, - such things as these, 
+Which others often show for pride,
+I value for their power to please,
+And selfish churls deride; -
+One Stradivarius, I confess,
+Two meerschaums, I would fain possess.
+
+Wealth's wasteful tricks I will not learn,
+Nor ape the glittering upstart fool; -
+Shall not carved tables serve my turn, 
+But all must be of buhl?
+Give grasping pomp its double share, -
+I ask but one recumbent chair.
+
+Thus humble let me live and die,
+Nor long for Midas' golden touch;
+If Heaven more generous gifts deny,
+I shall not miss them much, -
+Too grateful for the blessing lent
+Of simple tastes and mind content!
+
+Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-1894]
+
+
+THE BOYS
+
+Has there any old fellow got mixed with the boys?
+If there has, take him out, without making a noise.
+Hang the Almanac's cheat and the Catalogue's spite!
+Old Time is a liar!  We're twenty to-night!
+
+We're twenty!  We're twenty!  Who, says we are more?
+He's tipsy, - young jackanapes! - show him the door!
+"Gray temples at twenty?" - Yes! white if we please!
+Where the snow-flakes fall thickest there's nothing can freeze!
+
+Was it snowing I spoke of?  Excuse the mistake!
+Look close, - you will not see a sign of a flake!
+We want some new garlands for those we have shed, -
+And these are white roses in place of the red.
+
+We've a trick, we young fellows, you may have been told,
+Of talking (in public) as if we were old: -
+That boy we call "Doctor," and this we call "Judge;"
+It's a neat little fiction, - of course it's all fudge.
+
+That fellow's the "Speaker," - the one on the right;
+"Mr. Mayor," my young one, how are you to-night?
+That's our "Member of Congress," we say when we chaff;
+There's the "Reverend" What's his name? - don't make me laugh.
+
+That boy with the grave mathematical look
+Made believe he had written a wonderful book,
+And the ROYAL SOCIETY thought it was true!
+So they chose him right in; a good joke it was, too!
+
+There's a boy, we pretend, with a three-decker brain,
+That could harness a team with a logical chain;
+When he spoke for our manhood in syllabled fire,
+We called him "The Justice," but now he's "The Squire."
+
+And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith, -
+Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith;
+But he shouted a song for the brave and the free, -
+Just read on his medal, "My country," "of thee!"
+
+You hear that boy laughing? - You think he's all fun;
+But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done;
+The children laugh loud as they troop to his call,
+And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all!
+
+Yes, we're boys, - always playing with tongue or with pen, -
+And I sometimes have asked, - Shall we ever be men?
+Shall we always be youthful, and laughing, and gay,
+Till the last dear companion drops smiling away?
+
+Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its gray!
+The stars of its winter, the dews of its May!
+And when we have done with our life-lasting toys,
+Dear Father, take care of thy children, The Boys!
+
+Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-1894]
+
+
+THE JOLLY OLD PEDAGOGUE
+
+'Twas a jolly old pedagogue, long ago,
+Tall and slender, and sallow and dry;
+His form was bent, and his gait was slow,
+His long, thin hair was as white as snow,
+But a wonderful twinkle shone in his eye;
+And he sang every night as he went to bed,
+"Let us be happy down here below:
+The living should live, though the dead be dead,"
+Said the jolly old pedagogue, long ago.
+
+He taught his scholars the rule of three,
+Writing, and reading, and history, too;
+He took the little ones up on his knee,
+For a kind old heart in his breast had he,
+And the wants of the littlest child he knew:
+"Learn while you're young," he often said,
+"There is much to enjoy, down here below;
+Life for the living, and rest for the dead!"
+Said the jolly old pedagogue, long ago.
+
+With the stupidest boys he was kind and cool,
+Speaking only in gentlest tones;
+The rod was hardly known in his school . . .
+Whipping, to him, was a barbarous rule,
+And too hard work for his poor old bones;
+Besides, it was painful, he sometimes said:
+"We should make life pleasant, down here below,
+The living need charity more than the dead,"
+Said the jolly old pedagogue, long ago.
+
+He lived in the house by the hawthorn lane,
+With roses and woodbine over the door;
+His rooms were quiet, and neat, and plain,
+But a spirit of comfort there held reign,
+And made him forget he was old and poor;
+"I need so little," he often said;
+"And my friends and relatives here below
+Won't litigate over me when I am dead,"
+Said the jolly old pedagogue, long ago.
+
+But the pleasantest times that he had, of all,
+Were the sociable hours he used to pass,
+With his chair tipped back to a neighbor's wall,
+Making an unceremonious call,
+Over a pipe and a friendly glass:
+This was the finest picture, he said, 
+Of the many he tasted, here below;
+"Who has no cronies, had better be dead!"
+Said the jolly old pedagogue, long ago.
+
+Then the jolly old pedagogue's wrinkled face
+Melted all over in sunshiny smiles;
+He stirred his glass with an old-school grace,
+Chuckled, and sipped, and prattled apace,
+Till the house grew merry, from cellar to tiles:
+"I'm a pretty old man," he gently said,
+"I've lingered a long while, here below;
+But my heart is fresh, if my youth is fled!"
+Said the jolly old pedagogue, long ago.
+
+He smoked his pipe in the balmy air,
+Every night when the sun went down,
+While the soft wind played in his silvery hair,
+Leaving its tenderest kisses there,
+On the jolly old pedagogue's jolly old crown:
+And, feeling the kisses, he smiled and said,
+'Twas a glorious world, down here below;
+"Why wait for happiness till we are dead?"
+Said the jolly old pedagogue, long ago.
+
+He sat at his door, one midsummer night,
+After the sun had sunk in the west,
+And the lingering beams of golden light
+Made his kindly old face look warm and bright,
+While the odorous night-wind whispered "Rest!"
+Gently, gently, he bowed his head. . . .
+There were angels waiting for him, I know;
+He was sure of happiness, living or dead,
+This jolly old pedagogue, long ago!
+
+George Arnold [1834-1865]
+
+
+ON AN INTAGLIO HEAD OF MINERVA
+
+Beneath the warrior's helm, behold
+The flowing tresses of the woman!
+Minerva, Pallas, what you will -
+A winsome creature, Greek or Roman.
+
+Minerva?  No! 'tis some sly minx
+In cousin's helmet masquerading;
+If not - then Wisdom was a dame
+For sonnets and for serenading!
+
+I thought the goddess cold, austere,
+Not made for love's despairs and blisses:
+Did Pallas wear her hair like that?
+Was Wisdom's mouth so shaped for kisses?
+
+The Nightingale should be her bird,
+And not the Owl, big-eyed and solemn:
+How very fresh she looks, and yet
+She's older far than Trajan's Column!
+
+The magic hand that carved this face,
+And set this vine-work round it running,
+Perhaps ere mighty Phidias wrought,
+Had lost its subtle skill and cunning.
+
+Who was he?  Was he glad or sad,
+Who knew to carve in such a fashion?
+Perchance he graved the dainty head
+For some brown girl that scorned his passion.
+
+Perchance, in some still garden-place,
+Where neither fount nor tree to-day is,
+He flung the jewel at the feet
+Of Phryne, or perhaps 'twas Lais.
+
+But he is dust; we may not know
+His happy or unhappy story:
+Nameless, and dead these centuries,
+His work outlives him, - there's his glory!
+
+Both man and jewel lay in earth
+Beneath a lava-buried city;
+The countless summers came and went,
+With neither haste, nor hate, nor pity.
+
+Years blotted out the man, but left
+The jewel fresh as any blossom,
+Till some Visconti dug it up, -
+To rise and fall on Mabel's bosom!
+
+O nameless brother! see how Time
+Your gracious handiwork has guarded:
+See how your loving, patient art
+Has come, at last, to be rewarded.
+
+Who would not suffer slights of men,
+And pangs of hopeless passion also,
+To have his carven agate-stone
+On such a bosom rise and fall so!
+
+Thomas Bailey Aldrich [1837-1907]
+
+
+THALIA
+A Middle-aged Lyrical Poet Is supposed To Be Taking
+Final Leave Of The Muse Of Comedy.  She Has Brought
+Him His Hat And Gloves, And Is Abstractedly Picking
+A Thread Of Gold Hair From His Coat Sleeve As He
+Begins To Speak:
+
+I say it under the rose -
+ oh, thanks! - yes, under the laurel,
+We part lovers, not foes;
+ we are not going to quarrel.
+
+We have too long been friends
+ on foot and in gilded coaches,
+Now that the whole thing ends,
+ to spoil our kiss with reproaches.
+
+I leave you; my soul is wrung;
+ I pause, look back from the portal -
+Ah, I no more am young,
+ and you, child, you are immortal!
+
+Mine is the glacier's way,
+ yours is the blossom's weather -
+When were December and May
+ known to be happy together?
+
+Before my kisses grow tame,
+ before my moodiness grieve you,
+While yet my heart is flame,
+ and I all lover, I leave you.
+
+So, in the coming time,
+ when you count the rich years over,
+Think of me in my prime,
+ and not as a white-haired lover,
+
+Fretful, pierced with regret,
+ the wraith of a dead Desire
+Thrumming a cracked spinet
+ by a slowly dying fire.
+
+When, at last, I am cold -
+ years hence, if the gods so will it -
+Say, "He was true as gold,"
+ and wear a rose in your fillet!
+
+Others, tender as I,
+ will come and sue for caresses,
+Woo you, win you, and die -
+ mind you, a rose in your tresses!
+
+Some Melpomene woo,
+ some hold Clio the nearest;
+You, sweet Comedy - you
+ were ever sweetest and dearest!
+
+Nay, it is time to go.
+ When writing your tragic sister
+Say to that child of woe
+ how sorry I was I missed her.
+
+Really, I cannot stay,
+ though "parting is such sweet sorrow" . . .
+Perhaps I will, on my way
+ down-town, look in to-morrow!
+
+Thomas Bailey Aldrich [1837-1907]
+
+
+PAN IN WALL STREET
+A. D. 1867
+
+Just where the Treasury's marble front
+Looks over Wall Street's mingled nations;
+Where Jews and Gentiles most are wont
+To throng for trade and last quotations;
+Where, hour by hour, the rates of gold
+Outrival, in the ears of people,
+The quarter-chimes, serenely tolled
+From Trinity's undaunted steeple, -
+
+Even there I heard a strange, wild strain
+Sound high above the modern clamor,
+Above the cries of greed and gain,
+The curbstone war, the auction's hammer;
+And swift, on Music's misty ways,
+It led, from all this strife for millions,
+To ancient, sweet-to-nothing days
+Among the kirtle-robed Sicilians.
+
+And as it stilled the multitude,
+And yet more joyous rose, and shriller,
+I saw the minstrel, where he stood
+At ease against a Doric pillar:
+One hand a droning organ played,
+The other held a Pan's-pipe (fashioned
+Like those of old) to lips that made
+The reeds give out that strain impassioned.
+
+'Twas Pan himself had wandered here
+A-strolling through this sordid city,
+And piping to the civic ear
+The prelude of some pastoral ditty!
+The demigod had crossed the seas, -
+From haunts of shepherd, nymph, and satyr,
+And Syracusan times, - to these
+Far shores and twenty centuries later.
+
+A ragged cap was on his head;
+But - hidden thus - there was no doubting
+That, all with crispy locks o'erspread,
+His gnarled horns were somewhere sprouting;
+His club-feet, cased in rusty shoes,
+Were crossed, as on some frieze you see them,
+And trousers, patched of divers hues,
+Concealed his crooked shanks beneath them.
+
+He filled the quivering reeds with sound,
+And o'er his mouth their changes shifted,
+And with his goat's-eyes looked around
+Where'er the passing current drifted;
+And soon, as on Trinacrian hills
+The nymphs and herdsmen ran to hear him,
+Even now the tradesmen from their tills,
+With clerks and porters, crowded near him.
+
+The bulls and bears together drew
+From Jauncey Court and New Street Alley,
+As erst, if pastorals be true,
+Came beasts from every wooded valley;
+The random passers stayed to list, -
+A boxer Aegon, rough and merry,
+A Broadway Daphnis, on his tryst 
+With Nais at the Brooklyn Ferry.
+
+A one-eyed Cyclops halted long
+In tattered cloak of army pattern,
+And Galatea joined the throng, -
+A blowsy, apple-vending slattern;
+While old Silenus staggered out
+From some new-fangled lunch-house handy,
+And bade the piper, with a shout,
+To strike up Yankee Doodle Dandy!
+
+A newsboy and a peanut-girl
+Like little Fauns began to caper:
+His hair was all in tangled curl,
+Her tawny legs were bare and taper;
+And still the gathering larger grew,
+And gave its pence and crowded nigher,
+While aye the shepherd-minstrel blew
+His pipe, and struck the gamut higher.
+
+O heart of Nature, beating still
+With throbs her vernal passion taught her, -
+Even here, as on the vine-clad hill,
+Or by the Arethusan water!
+New forms may fold the speech, new lands
+Arise within these ocean-portals,
+But Music waves eternal wands, -
+Enchantress of the souls of mortals!
+
+So thought I, - but among us trod
+A man in blue, with legal baton,
+And scoffed the vagrant demigod,
+And pushed him from the step I sat on.
+Doubting I mused upon the cry,
+"Great Pan is dead!" - and all the people
+Went on their ways: - and clear and high
+The quarter sounded from the steeple.
+
+Edmund Clarence Stedman [1833-1908]
+
+
+UPON LESBIA - ARGUING
+
+My Lesbia, I will not deny,
+Bewitches me completely;
+She has the usual beaming eye,
+And smiles upon me sweetly:
+But she has an unseemly way
+Of contradicting what I say.
+
+And, though I am her closest friend,
+And find her fascinating,
+I cannot cordially commend
+Her method of debating:
+Her logic, though she is divine,
+Is singularly feminine.
+
+Her reasoning is full of tricks,
+And butterfly suggestions,
+I know no point to which she sticks,
+She begs the simplest questions;
+And, when her premises are strong,
+She always draws her inference wrong.
+
+Broad, liberal views on men and things
+She will not hear a word of;
+To prove herself correct she brings
+Some instance she has heard of;
+The argument ad hominem
+Appears her favorite strategem.
+
+Old Socrates, with sage replies
+To questions put to suit him,
+Would not, I think, have looked so wise
+With Lesbia to confute him;
+He would more probably have bade
+Xantippe hasten to his aid.
+
+Ah! well, my fair philosopher,
+With clear brown eyes that glisten
+So sweetly, that I much prefer
+To look at them than listen,
+Preach me your sermon: have your way,
+The voice is yours, whate'er you say.
+
+Alfred Cochrane [1865-
+
+
+TO ANTHEA, WHO MAY COMMAND HIM ANYTHING
+(New Style)
+
+Am I sincere?  I say I dote
+On everything that Browning wrote;
+I know some bits by heart to quote:
+But then She reads him.
+I say - and is it strictly true? -
+How I admire her cockatoo;
+Well! in a way of course I do:
+But then She feeds him.
+
+And I become, at her command,
+The sternest Tory in the land;
+The Grand Old Man is far from grand;
+But then She states it.
+Nay! worse than that, I am so tame,
+I once admitted - to my shame -
+That football was a brutal game:
+Because She hates it.
+
+My taste in Art she hailed with groans,
+And I, once charmed with bolder tones,
+Now love the yellows of Burne-Jones:
+But then She likes them.
+My tuneful soul no longer hoards
+Stray jewels from the Empire boards;
+I revel now in Dvorak's chords:
+But then She strikes them.
+
+Our age distinctly cramps a knight;
+Yet, though debarred from tilt and fight,
+I can admit that black is white,
+If She asserts it.
+Heroes of old were luckier men
+Than I - I venture now and then
+To hint - retracting meekly when
+She controverts it.
+
+Alfred Cochrane [1865-
+
+
+THE EIGHT-DAY CLOCK
+
+The days of Bute and Grafton's fame,
+Of Chatham's waning prime,
+First heard your sounding gong proclaim
+Its chronicle of Time;
+Old days when Dodd confessed his guilt,
+When Goldsmith drave his quill,
+And genial gossip Horace built
+His house on Strawberry Hill.
+
+Now with a grave unmeaning face
+You still repeat the tale,
+High-towering in your somber case,
+Designed by Chippendale;
+Without regret for what is gone,
+You bid old customs change,
+As year by year you travel on
+To scenes and voices strange.
+
+We might have mingled with the crowd
+Of courtiers in this hall,
+The fans that swayed, the wigs that bowed,
+But you have spoiled it all;
+We might have lingered in the train
+Of nymphs that Reynolds drew,
+Or stared spell-bound in Drury Lane
+At Garrick - but for you.
+
+We might in Leicester Fields have swelled
+The throng of beaux and cits,
+Or listened to the concourse held
+Among the Kitcat wits;
+Have strolled with Selwyn in Pall Mall,
+Arrayed in gorgeous silks,
+Or in Great George Street raised a yell
+For Liberty and Wilkes.
+
+This is the life which you have known,
+Which you have ticked away,
+In one unmoved unfaltering tone
+That ceased not day by day,
+While ever round your dial moved
+Your hands from span to span,
+Through drowsy hours and hours that proved
+Big with the fate of man.
+
+A steady tick for fatal creeds,
+For youth on folly bent,
+A steady tick for worthy deeds,
+And moments wisely spent;
+No warning note of emphasis,
+No whisper of advice,
+To ruined rake or flippant miss,
+For coquetry or dice.
+
+You might, I think, have hammered out
+With meaning doubly dear,
+The midnight of a Vauxhall rout
+In Evelina's ear;
+Or when the night was almost gone,
+You might, the deals between,
+Have startled those who looked upon
+The cloth when it was green.
+
+But no, in all the vanished years
+Down which your wheels have run,
+Your message borne to heedless ears
+Is one and only one -
+No wit of men, no power of kings,
+Can stem the overthrow
+Wrought by this pendulum that swings
+Sedately to and fro.
+
+Alfred Cochrane [1865-
+
+
+A PORTRAIT
+
+In sunny girlhood's vernal life
+She caused no small sensation,
+But now the modest English wife
+To others leaves flirtation.
+She's young still, lovely, debonair,
+Although sometimes her features
+Are clouded by a thought of care
+For those two tiny creatures.
+
+Each tiny, toddling, mottled mite
+Asserts with voice emphatic,
+In lisping accents, "Mite is right,"
+Their rule is autocratic:
+The song becomes, that charmed mankind,
+Their musical narcotic,
+And baby lips than Love, she'll find,
+Are even more despotic.
+
+Soft lullaby when singing there,
+And castles ever building,
+Their destiny she'll carve in air,
+Bright with maternal gilding:
+Young Guy, a clever advocate,
+So eloquent and able!
+A powdered wig upon his pate,
+A coronet for Mabel!
+
+Joseph Ashby-Sterry [1838-1917]
+
+
+"OLD BOOKS ARE BEST"
+
+Old Books are best!  With what delight
+Does "Faithorne fecit" greet our sight
+On frontispiece or title-page
+Of that old time, when on the stage
+"Sweet Nell" set "Rowley's" heart alight!
+
+And you, O Friend, to whom I write,
+Must not deny, e'en though you might,
+Through fear of modern pirates' rage,
+Old Books are best.
+
+What though the print be not so bright,
+The paper dark, the binding slight?
+Our author, be he dull or sage,
+Returning from that distant age
+So lives again, we say of right:
+Old Books are best.
+
+Beverly Chew [1850-1924]
+
+
+IMPRESSION
+
+In these restrained and careful times
+Our knowledge petrifies our rhymes;
+Ah! for that reckless fire men had
+When it was witty to be mad;
+
+When wild conceits were piled in scores,
+And lit by flaming metaphors,
+When all was crazed and out of tune, -
+Yet throbbed with music of the moon.
+
+If we could dare to write as ill
+As some whose voices haunt us still,
+Even we, perchance, might call our own
+Their deep enchanting undertone.
+
+We are too diffident and nice,
+Too learned and too over-wise,
+Too much afraid of faults to be
+The flutes of bold sincerity.
+
+For, as this sweet life passes by,
+We blink and nod with critic eye;
+We've no words rude enough to give
+Its charm so frank and fugitive.
+
+The green and scarlet of the Park,
+The undulating streets at dark,
+The brown smoke blown across the blue,
+This colored city we walk through; -
+
+The pallid faces full of pain,
+The field-smell of the passing wain,
+The laughter, longing, perfume, strife,
+The daily spectacle of life; -
+
+Ah! how shall this be given to rhyme,
+By rhymesters of a knowing time?
+Ah! for the age when verse was clad,
+Being godlike, to be bad and mad.
+
+Edmund Gosse [1849-1928]
+
+
+"WITH STRAWBERRIES"
+
+With strawberries we filled a tray,
+And then we drove away, away
+Along the links beside the sea,
+Where wave and wind were light and free,
+And August felt as fresh as May,
+
+And where the springy turf was gay
+With thyme and balm and many a spray
+Of wild roses, you tempted me
+With strawberries!
+
+A shadowy sail, silent and gray,
+Stole like a ghost across the bay;
+But none could hear me ask my fee,
+And none could know what came to be.
+Can sweethearts all their thirst allay
+With strawberries?
+
+William Ernest Henley [1849-1903]
+
+
+BALLADE OF LADIES' NAMES
+
+Brown's for Lalage, Jones for Lelia,
+Robinson's bosom for Beatrice glows,
+Smith is a Hamlet before Ophelia.
+The glamor stays if the reason goes!
+Every lover the years disclose
+Is of a beautiful name made free.
+One befriends, and all others are foes.
+Anna's the name of names for me.
+
+Sentiment hallows the vowels of Delia;
+Sweet simplicity breathes from Rose;
+Courtly memories glitter in Celia;
+Rosalind savors of quips and hose,
+Araminta of wits and beaux,
+Prue of puddings, and Coralie
+All of sawdust and spangled shows;
+Anna's the name of names for me.
+
+Fie upon Caroline, Madge, Amelia -
+These I reckon the essence of prose! -
+Cavalier Katherine, cold Cornelia,
+Portia's masterful Roman nose,
+Maud's magnificence, Totty's toes,
+Poll and Bet with their twang of the sea,
+Nell's impertinence, Pamela's woes!
+Anna's the name of names for me.
+
+ENVOY
+Ruth like a gillyflower smells and blows,
+Sylvia prattles of Arcadee,
+Sybil mystifies, Connie crows,
+Anna's the name of names for me!
+
+William Ernest Henley [1849-1903]
+
+
+TO A PAIR OF EGYPTIAN SLIPPERS
+
+Tiny slippers of gold and green,
+Tied with a mouldering golden cord!
+What pretty feet they must have been
+When Caesar Augustus was Egypt's lord!
+Somebody graceful and fair you were!
+Not many girls could dance in these!
+When did your shoemaker make you, dear,
+Such a nice pair of Egyptian "threes"?
+
+Where were you measured?  In Sais, or On,
+Memphis, or Thebes, or Pelusium?
+Fitting them neatly your brown toes upon,
+Lacing them deftly with finger and thumb,
+I seem to see you! - so long ago,
+Twenty-one centuries, less or more!
+And here are your sandals: yet none of us know
+What name, or fortune, or face you bore.
+
+Your lips would have laughed, with a rosy scorn,
+If the merchant, or slave-girl, had mockingly said,
+"The feet will pass, but the shoes they have worn
+Two thousand years onward Time's road shall tread,
+And still be footgear as good as new!"
+To think that calf-skin, gilded and stitched,
+Should Rome and the Pharaohs outlive - and you
+Be gone, like a dream, from the world you bewitched!
+
+Not that we mourn you! 'Twere too absurd!
+You have been such a very long while away!
+Your dry spiced dust would not value one word
+Of the soft regrets that my verse could say.
+Sorrow and Pleasure, and Love and Hate,
+If you ever felt them, have vaporized hence
+To this odor - so subtle and delicate -
+Of myrrh, and cassia, and frankincense.
+
+Of course they embalmed you!  Yet not so sweet
+Were aloes and nard, as the youthful glow
+Which Amenti stole when the small dark feet
+Wearied of treading our world below.
+Look! it was flood-time in valley of Nile,
+Or a very wet day in the Delta, dear!
+When your slippers tripped lightly their latest mile -
+The mud on the soles renders that fact clear.
+
+You knew Cleopatra, no doubt!  You saw
+Antony's galleys from Actium come.
+But there! if questions could answers draw
+From lips so many a long age dumb,
+I would not tease you with history,
+Nor vex your heart for the men that were;
+The one point to learn that would fascinate me
+Is, where and what are you to-day, my dear!
+
+You died, believing in Horus and Pasht,
+Isis, Osiris, and priestly lore;
+And found, of course, such theories smashed
+By actual fact on the heavenly shore.
+What next did you do?  Did you transmigrate?
+Have we seen you since, all modern and fresh?
+Your charming soul - so I calculate -
+Mislaid its mummy, and sought new flesh.
+
+Were you she whom I met at dinner last week,
+With eyes and hair of the Ptolemy black,
+Who still of this find in Fayoum would speak,
+And to Pharaohs and scarabs still carry us back?
+A scent of lotus about her hung,
+And she had such a far-away wistful air
+As of somebody born when the Earth was young;
+And she wore of gilt slippers a lovely pair.
+
+Perchance you were married?  These might have been
+Part of your trousseau - the wedding shoes;
+And you laid them aside with the garments green,
+And painted clay Gods which a bride would use;
+And, may be, to-day, by Nile's bright waters
+Damsels of Egypt in gowns of blue -
+Great-great-great - very great - grand-daughters
+Owe their shapely insteps to you!
+
+But vainly I beat at the bars of the Past,
+Little green slippers with golden strings!
+For all you can tell is that leather will last
+When loves, and delightings, and beautiful things
+Have vanished; forgotten - No! not quite that!
+I catch some gleam of the grace you wore
+When you finished with Life's daily pit-a-pat,
+And left your shoes at Death's bedroom door.
+
+You were born in the Egypt which did not doubt;
+You were never sad with our new-fashioned sorrows:
+You were sure, when your play-days on Earth ran out,
+Of play-times to come, as we of our morrows!
+Oh, wise little Maid of the Delta!  I lay
+Your shoes in your mummy-chest back again,
+And wish that one game we might merrily play
+At "Hunt the Slippers" - to see it all plain.
+
+Edwin Arnold [1832-1904]
+
+
+WITHOUT AND WITHIN
+
+My coachman, in the moonlight there,
+Looks through the side-light of the door;
+I hear him with his brethren swear,
+As I could do, - but only more.
+
+Flattening his nose against the pane,
+He envies me my brilliant lot,
+Breathes on his aching fists in vain,
+And dooms me to a place more hot.
+
+He sees me in to supper go,
+A silken wonder by my side,
+Bare arms, bare shoulders, and a row
+Of flounces, for the door too wide.
+
+He thinks how happy is my arm
+'Neath its white-gloved and jewelled load;
+And wishes me some dreadful harm,
+Hearing the merry corks explode.
+
+Meanwhile I inly curse the bore
+Of hunting still the same old coon,
+And envy him, outside the door,
+In golden quiets of the moon.
+
+The winter wind is not so cold
+As the bright smile he sees me win
+Nor the host's oldest wine so old
+As our poor gabble sour and thin.
+
+I envy him the ungyved prance
+With which his freezing feet he warms,
+And drag my lady's-chains and dance
+The galley-slave of dreary forms.
+
+Oh, could, he have my share of din,
+And I his quiet! - past a doubt
+'Twould still be one man bored within,
+And just another bored without.
+
+Nay, when, once paid my mortal fee,
+Some idler on my headstone grim
+Traces the moss-blurred name, will he
+Think me the happier, or I him?
+
+James Russell Lowell [1819-1891]
+
+
+"SHE WAS A BEAUTY"
+
+She was a beauty in the days
+When Madison was President,
+And quite coquettish in her ways, -
+On conquests of the heart intent.
+
+Grandpapa, on his right knee bent,
+Wooed her in stiff, old-fashioned phrase, -
+She was a beauty in the days
+When Madison was President.
+
+And when your roses where hers went
+Shall go, my Rose, who date from Hayes,
+I hope you'll wear her sweet content
+Of whom tradition lightly says:
+She was a beauty in the days
+When Madison was President.
+
+Henry Cuyler Bunner [1855-1896]
+
+
+NELL GWYNNE'S LOOKING-GLASS
+
+Glass antique, 'twixt thee and Nell
+Draw we here a parallel.
+She, like thee, was forced to bear
+All reflections, foul or fair.
+Thou art deep and bright within,
+Depths as bright belonged to Gwynne;
+Thou art very frail as well,
+Frail as flesh is, - so was Nell.
+
+Thou, her glass, art silver-lined,
+She too, had a silver mind:
+Thine is fresh till this far day,
+Hers till death ne'er wore away:
+Thou dost to thy surface win
+Wandering glances, so did Gwynne;
+Eyes on thee love long to dwell,
+So men's eyes would do on Nell.
+
+Life-like forms in thee are sought,
+Such the forms the actress wrought;
+Truth unfailing rests in you,
+Nell, whate'er she was, was true.
+Clear as virtue, dull as sin,
+Thou art oft, as oft was Gwynne;
+Breathe on thee, and drops will swell:
+Bright tears dimmed the eyes of Nell.
+
+Thine's a frame to charm the sight,
+Framed was she to give delight;
+Waxen forms here truly show
+Charles above and Nell below;
+But between them, chin with chin,
+Stuart stands as low as Gwynne, -
+Paired, yet parted, - meant to tell
+Charles was opposite to Nell.
+
+Round the glass wherein her face
+Smiled so soft, her "arms" we trace;
+Thou, her mirror, hast the pair,
+Lion here, and leopard there.
+She had part in these, - akin
+To the lion-heart was Gwynne;
+And the leopard's beauty fell
+With its spots to bounding Nell.
+
+Oft inspected, ne'er seen through,
+Thou art firm, if brittle too;
+So her will, on good intent,
+Might be broken, never bent.
+What the glass was, when therein
+Beamed the face of glad Nell Gwynne,
+Was that face by beauty's spell
+To the honest soul of Nell.
+
+Laman Blanchard [1804-1845]
+
+
+MIMNERMUS IN CHURCH
+
+You promise heavens free from strife,
+Pure truth, and perfect change of will;
+But sweet, sweet is this human life,
+So sweet, I fain would breathe it still:
+Your chilly stars I can forego,
+This warm kind world is all I know.
+
+You say there is no substance here,
+One great reality above:
+Back from that void I shrink in fear,
+And child-like hide myself in love:
+Show me what angels feel.  Till then
+I cling, a mere weak man, to men.
+
+You bid me lift my mean desires
+From faltering lips and fitful veins
+To sexless souls, ideal choirs,
+Unwearied voices, wordless strains:
+My mind with fonder welcome owns
+One dear dead friend's remembered tones.
+
+Forsooth the present we must give
+To that which cannot pass away;
+All beauteous things for which we live
+By laws of time and space decay.
+But oh, the very reason why
+I clasp them, is because they die.
+
+William Johnson-Cory [1823-1892]
+
+
+CLAY
+
+"We are but clay," the preacher saith;
+"The heart is clay, and clay the brain,
+And soon or late there cometh death
+To mingle us with earth again."
+
+Well, let the preacher have it so,
+And clay we are, and clay shall be; -
+Why iterate? - for this I know,
+That clay does very well for me.
+
+When clay has such red mouths to kiss,
+Firm hands to grasp, it is enough:
+How can I take it aught amiss
+We are not made of rarer stuff?
+
+And if one tempt you to believe
+His choice would be immortal gold,
+Question him, Can you then conceive
+A warmer heart than clay can hold?
+
+Or richer joys than clay can feel?
+And when perforce he falters nay,
+Bid him renounce his wish and kneel
+In thanks for this same kindly clay.
+
+Edward Verrall Lucas [1868-
+
+
+AUCASSIN AND NICOLETE
+
+What magic halo rings thy head,
+Dream-maiden of a minstrel dead?
+What charm of faerie round thee hovers,
+That all who listen are thy lovers?
+
+What power yet makes our pulses thrill
+To see thee at thy window-sill,
+And by that dangerous cord down-sliding,
+And through the moonlit garden gliding?
+
+True maiden art thou in thy dread;
+True maiden in thy hardihead;
+True maiden when, thy fears half-over,
+Thou lingerest to try thy lover.
+
+And ah! what heart of stone or steel
+But doth some stir unwonted feel,
+When to the day new brightness bringing
+Thou standest at the stair-foot singing!
+
+Thy slender limbs in boyish dress,
+Thy tones half glee, half tenderness,
+Thou singest, 'neath the light tale's cover,
+Of thy true love to thy true lover.
+
+O happy lover, happy maid,
+Together in sweet story laid;
+Forgive the hand that here is baring
+Your old loves for new lovers' staring!
+
+Yet, Nicolete, why fear'st thou fame?
+No slander now can touch thy name,
+Nor Scandal's self a fault discovers,
+Though each new year thou hast new lovers.
+
+Nor, Aucassin, need'st thou to fear
+These lovers of too late a year,
+Nor dread one jealous pang's revival;
+No lover now can be thy rival.
+
+What flower considers if its blooms
+Light, haunts of men, or forest glooms?
+What care ye though the world discovers
+Your flowers of love, O flower of lovers!
+
+Francis William Bourdillon [1852-1921]
+
+
+PROVENCAL LOVERS
+Aucassin And Nicolette
+
+Within the garden of Beaucaire
+He met her by a secret stair, -
+The night was centuries ago.
+Said Aucassin, "My love, my pet,
+These old confessors vex me so!
+They threaten all the pains of hell
+Unless I give you up, ma belle"; -
+Said Aucassin to Nicolette.
+
+"Now who should there in Heaven be
+To fill your place, ma tres-douce mie?
+To reach that spot I little care!
+There all the droning priests are met;
+All the old cripples, too, are there
+That unto shrines and altars cling
+To filch the Peter-pence we bring"; -
+Said Aucassin to Nicolette.
+
+"There are the barefoot monks and friars
+With gowns well tattered by the briars,
+The saints who lift their eyes and whine:
+I like them not - a starveling set!
+Who'd care with folk like these to dine?
+The other road 'twere just as well
+That you and I should take, ma belle!" -
+Said Aucassin to Nicolette.
+
+"To purgatory I would go
+With pleasant comrades whom we know,
+Fair scholars, minstrels, lusty knights
+Whose deeds the land will not forget,
+The captains of a hundred fights,
+The men of valor and degree:
+We'll join that gallant company," -
+Said Aucassin to Nicolette.
+
+"There, too, are jousts and joyance rare,
+And beauteous ladies debonair,
+The pretty dames, the merry brides,
+Who with their wedded lords coquette
+And have a friend or two besides, -
+And all in gold and trappings gay,
+With furs, and crests in vair and gray," -
+Said Aucassin to Nicolette.
+
+"Sweet players on the cithern strings,
+And they who roam the world like kings,
+Are gathered there, so blithe and free!
+Pardie! I'd join them now, my pet,
+If you went also, ma douce mie!
+The joys of Heaven I'd forego
+To have you with me there below," -
+Said Aucassin to Nicolette.
+
+Edmund Clarence Stedman [1833-1908]
+
+
+ON THE HURRY OF THIS TIME
+
+With slower pen men used to write,
+Of old, when "letters" were "polite";
+In Anna's or in George's days,
+They could afford to turn a phrase,
+Or trim a struggling theme aright.
+
+They knew not steam; electric light
+Not yet had dazed their calmer sight; -
+They meted out both blame and praise
+With slower pen.
+
+Too swiftly now the Hours take flight!
+What's read at morn is dead at night:
+Scant space have we for Art's delays,
+Whose breathless thought so briefly stays,
+We may not work - ah! would we might! -
+With slower pen.
+
+Austin Dobson [1840-1921]
+
+
+"GOOD-NIGHT, BABETTE!"
+Si vieillesse pouvait! -
+
+Scene. - A small neat Room.  In a high Voltaire Chair
+         sits a white-haired old Gentleman.
+
+Monsieur Vieuxbois           Babette
+
+   M. Vieuxbois (turning querulously)
+Day of my life!  Where can she get!
+Babette!  I say!  Babette! - Babette!
+
+   Babette (entering hurriedly)
+Coming, M'sieu'!  If M'sieu' speaks
+So loud, he won't be well for weeks!
+
+   M. Vieuxbois 
+Where have you been?
+
+   Babette 
+Why M'sieu' knows: -
+April! . . . Ville d'Avray! . . . Ma'am'selle Rose!
+
+   M. Vieuxbois 
+Ah! I am old, - and I forget.
+Was the place growing green, Babette?
+
+   Babette 
+But of a greenness! - yes, M'sieu'!
+And then the sky so blue! - so blue!
+And when I dropped my immortelle,
+How the birds sang!
+(Lifting her apron to her eyes)
+This poor Ma'am'selle!
+
+   M. Vieuxbois 
+You're a good girl, Babette, but she, -
+She was an Angel, verily.
+Sometimes I think I see her yet
+Stand smiling by the cabinet;
+And once, I know, she peeped and laughed
+Betwixt the curtains . . .
+Where's the draught?
+(She gives him a cup)
+Now I shall sleep, I think, Babette; -
+Sing me your Norman chansonnette.
+
+   Babette (sings)
+"Once at the Angelus,
+(Ere I was dead),
+Angels all glorious
+Came to my bed;
+Angels in blue and white
+Crowned on the Head."
+
+   M. Vieuxbois (drowsily)
+"She was an Angel" . . . "Once she laughed" . . .
+What, was I dreaming?
+Where's the draught?
+
+   Babette (showing the empty cup)
+The draught, M'sieu'?
+
+   M. Vieuxbois 
+How I forget!
+I am so old!  But sing, Babette!
+
+   Babette (sings)
+"One was the Friend I left
+Stark in the Snow;
+One was the Wife that died
+Long, - long ago;
+One was the Love I lost . . .
+How could she know?"
+
+   M. Vieuxbois (murmuring)
+Ah, Paul! . . . old Paul! . . . Eulalie too!
+And Rose . . . And O! "the sky so blue!"
+
+   Babette (sings)
+"One had my Mother's eyes,
+Wistful and mild;
+One had my Father's face;
+One was a Child:
+All of them bent to me, -
+Bent down and smiled!"
+(He is asleep!)
+
+   M. Vieuxbois (almost inaudibly)
+"How I forget!"
+"I am so old!" . . . "Good-night, Babette!"
+
+Austin Dobson [1840-1921]
+
+
+A DIALOGUE FROM PLATO
+Le tempo le mieux employe est celui qu'on perd. - Claude Tillier
+
+I'd "read" three hours.  Both notes and text
+Were fast a mist becoming;
+In bounced a vagrant bee, perplexed,
+And filled the room with humming,
+
+Then out.  The casement's leafage sways,
+And, parted light, discloses
+Miss Di., with hat and book, - a maze
+Of muslin mixed with roses.
+
+"You're reading Greek?" "I am - and you?"
+"O, mine's a mere romancer!"
+"So Plato is." "Then read him - do;
+And I'll read mine for answer."
+
+I read: "My Plato (Plato, too -
+That wisdom thus should harden!)
+Declares 'blue eyes look doubly blue
+Beneath a Dolly Varden.'"
+
+She smiled.  "My book in turn avers
+(No author's name is stated)
+That sometimes those Philosophers
+Are sadly mistranslated."
+
+"But hear, - the next's in stronger style:
+The Cynic School asserted
+That two red lips which part and smile
+May not be controverted!"
+
+She smiled once more.  "My book, I find,
+Observes some modern doctors
+Would make the Cynics out a kind
+Of album-verse concoctors."
+
+Then I: "Why not?  'Ephesian law,
+No less than time's tradition,
+Enjoined fair speech on all who saw
+Diana's apparition."
+
+She blushed, - this time.  "If Plato's page
+No wiser precept teaches,
+Then I'd renounce that doubtful sage,
+And walk to Burnham Beeches."
+
+"Agreed," I said.  "For Socrates
+(I find he too is talking)
+Thinks Learning can't remain at ease
+When Beauty goes a-walking."
+
+She read no more.  I leapt the sill:
+The sequel's scarce essential -
+Nay, more than this, I hold it still
+Profoundly confidential.
+
+Austin Dobson [1840-1921]
+
+
+THE LADIES OF ST. JAMES'S
+A Proper New Ballad Of The Country And The Town
+
+Phyllida amo ante alias. - Virgil
+
+The ladies of St. James's
+Go swinging to the play;
+Their footmen run before them,
+With a "Stand by!  Clear the way!"
+But Phyllida, my Phyllida!
+She takes her buckled shoon,
+When we go out a-courting
+Beneath the harvest moon.
+
+The ladies of St. James's
+Wear satin on their backs;
+They sit all night at Ombre,
+With candles all of wax:
+But Phyllida, my Phyllida!
+She dons her russet gown,
+And runs to gather May dew
+Before the world is down.
+
+The ladies of St. James's!
+They are so fine and fair,
+You'd think a box of essences
+Was broken in the air:
+But Phyllida, my Phyllida!
+The breath of heath and furze
+When breezes blow at morning,
+Is not so fresh as hers.
+
+The ladies of St. James's!
+They're painted to the eyes;
+Their white it stays for ever,
+Their red it never dies:
+But Phyllida, my Phyllida!
+Her color comes and goes;
+It trembles to a lily, -
+It wavers to a rose.
+
+The ladies of St. James's!
+You scarce can understand
+The half of all their speeches,
+Their phrases are so grand:
+But Phyllida, my Phyllida!
+Her shy and simple words
+Are clear as after rain-drops
+The music of the birds.
+
+The ladies of St. James's!
+They have their fits and freaks;
+They smile on you - for seconds,
+They frown on you - for weeks:
+But Phyllida, my Phyllida!
+Come either storm or shine,
+From Shrove-tide unto Shrove-tide,
+Is always true - and mine.
+
+My Phyllida! my Phyllida!
+I care not though they heap
+The hearts of all St. James's,
+And give me all to keep;
+I care not whose the beauties
+Of all the world may be,
+For Phyllida - for Phyllida
+Is all the world to me!
+
+Austin Dobson [1840-1921]
+
+
+THE CURE'S PROGRESS
+
+Monsieur the Cure down the street
+Comes with his kind old face, -
+With his coat worn bare, and his straggling hair,
+And his green umbrella-case.
+
+You may see him pass by the little "Grande Place",
+And the tiny "Hotel-de-Ville";
+He smiles, as he goes, to the fleuriste Rose,
+And the pompier Theophile.
+
+He turns, as a rule, through the "Marche" cool,
+Where the noisy fish-wives call;
+And his compliment pays to the "Belle Therese",
+As she knits in her dusky stall.
+
+There's a letter to drop at the locksmith's shop,
+And Toto, the locksmith's niece,
+Has jubilant hopes, for the Cure gropes
+In his tails for a pain d'epice.
+
+There's a little dispute with a merchant of fruit,
+Who is said to be heterodox,
+That will ended be with a "Ma foi, oui!"
+And a pinch from the Cure's box.
+
+There is also a word that no one heard
+To the furrier's daughter Lou.;
+And a pale cheek fed with a flickering red,
+And a "Ben Dieu garde M'sieu'!"
+
+But a grander way for the Sous-Prefet,
+And a bow for Ma'am'selle Anne;
+And a mock "off-hat" to the Notary's cat,
+And a nod to the Sacristan: -
+
+For ever through life the Cure goes
+With a smile on his kind old face -
+With his coat worn bare, and his straggling hair,
+And his green umbrella-case.
+
+Austin Dobson [1840-1921]
+
+
+A GENTLEMAN OF THE OLD SCHOOL
+
+He lived in that past Georgian day,
+When men were less inclined to say
+That "Time is Gold," and overlay
+With toil their pleasure;
+He held some land, and dwelt thereon, -
+Where, I forget, - the house is gone;
+His Christian name, I think, was John, -
+His surname, Leisure.
+
+Reynolds has painted him, - a face
+Filled with a fine, old-fashioned grace,
+Fresh-colored, frank, with ne'er a trace
+Of trouble shaded;
+The eyes are blue, the hair is dressed
+In plainest way, - one hand is pressed
+Deep in a flapped canary vest,
+With buds brocaded.
+
+He wears a brown old Brunswick coat,
+With silver buttons, - round his throat,
+A soft cravat; - in all you note
+An elder fashion, -
+A strangeness, which, to us who shine
+In shapely hats, - whose coats combine
+All harmonies of hue and line,
+Inspires compassion.
+
+He lived so long ago, you see!
+Men were untravelled then, but we,
+Like Ariel, post o'er land and sea
+With careless parting;
+He found it quite enough for him
+To smoke his pipe in "garden trim,"
+And watch, about the fish tank's brim,
+The swallows darting.
+
+He liked the well-wheel's creaking tongue, -
+He liked the thrush that fed her young, -
+He liked the drone of flies among
+His netted peaches;
+He liked to watch the sunlight fall
+Athwart his ivied orchard wall;
+Or pause to catch the cuckoo's call
+Beyond the beeches.
+
+His were the times of Paint and Patch,
+And yet no Ranelagh could match
+The sober doves that round his thatch
+Spread tails and sidled;
+He liked their ruffling, puffed content;
+For him their drowsy wheelings meant
+More than a Mall of Beaux that bent,
+Or Belles that bridled.
+
+Not that, in truth, when life began
+He shunned the flutter of the fan;
+He too had maybe "pinked his man"
+In Beauty's quarrel;
+But now his "fervent youth" had flown
+Where lost things go; and he was grown
+As staid and slow-paced as his own
+Old hunter, Sorrel.
+
+Yet still he loved the chase, and held
+That no composer's score excelled
+The merry horn, when Sweetlip swelled
+Its jovial riot;
+But most his measured words of praise
+Caressed the angler's easy ways, -
+His idly meditative days, -
+His rustic diet.
+
+Not that his "meditating" rose
+Beyond a sunny summer doze;
+He never troubled his repose
+With fruitless prying;
+But held, as law for high and low,
+What God withholds no man can know,
+And smiled away enquiry so,
+Without replying.
+
+We read - alas, how much we read! -
+The jumbled strifes of creed and creed
+With endless controversies feed
+Our groaning tables;
+His books - and they sufficed him - were
+Cotton's Montaigne, The Grave of Blair,
+A "Walton" - much the worse for wear,
+And Aesop's Fables.
+
+One more - The Bible.  Not that he
+Had searched its page as deep as we;
+No sophistries could make him see
+Its slender credit;
+It may be that he could not count
+The sires and sons to Jesse's fount, -
+He liked the "Sermon on the Mount," -
+And more, he read it.
+
+Once he had loved, but failed to wed,
+A red-cheeked lass who long was dead;
+His ways were far too slow, he said,
+To quite forget her;
+And still when time had turned him gray,
+The earliest hawthorn buds in May
+Would find his lingering feet astray,
+Where first he met her.
+
+"In Coelo Quies" heads the stone
+On Leisure's grave, - now little known,
+A tangle of wild-rose has grown
+So thick across it;
+The "Benefactions" still declare
+He left the clerk an elbow-chair,
+And "12 Pence Yearly to Prepare
+A Christmas Posset."
+
+Lie softly, Leisure!  Doubtless you,
+With too serene a conscience drew
+Your easy breath, and slumbered through
+The gravest issue;
+But we, to whom our age allows
+Scarce space to wipe our weary brows,
+Look down upon your narrow house,
+Old friend, and miss you!
+
+Austin Dobson [1840-1921]
+
+
+ON A FAN
+That Belonged To The Marquise De Pompadour
+
+Chicken-skin, delicate, white,
+Painted by Carlo Vanloo,
+Loves in a riot of light,
+Roses and vaporous blue;
+Hark to the dainty frou-frou!
+Picture above, if you can,
+Eyes that could melt as the dew, -
+This was the Pompadour's fan!
+
+See how they rise at the sight,
+Thronging the Ceil de Boeuf through,
+Courtiers as butterflies bright,
+Beauties that Fragonard drew,
+Talon-rouge, falbala, queue,
+Cardinal, Duke, - to a man,
+Eager to sigh or to sue, -
+This was the Pompadour's fan!
+
+Ah, but things more than polite
+Hung on this toy, voyez-vous! 
+Matters of state and of might,
+Things that great ministers do;
+Things that, maybe, overthrew
+Those in whose brains they began;
+Here was the sign and the cue, -
+This was the Pompadour's fan!
+
+ENVOY
+Where are the secrets it knew?
+Weavings of plot and of plan?
+- But where is the Pompadour, too?
+This was the Pompadour's Fan!
+
+Austin Dobson [1840-1921]
+
+
+"WHEN I SAW YOU LAST, ROSE"
+
+When I saw you last, Rose,
+You were only so high; -
+How fast the time goes!
+
+Like a bud ere it blows,
+You just peeped at the sky,
+When I saw you last, Rose!
+
+Now your petals unclose,
+Now your May-time is nigh; -
+How fast the time goes!
+
+And a life, - how it grows!
+You were scarcely so shy,
+When I saw you last, Rose!
+
+In your bosom it shows
+There's a guest on the sly;
+(How fast the time goes!)
+
+Is it Cupid?  Who knows!
+Yet you used not to sigh,
+When I saw you last, Rose; -
+How fast the time goes!
+
+Austin Dobson [1840-1921]
+
+
+URCEUS EXIT
+
+I intended an Ode,
+And it turned to a Sonnet.
+It began a la mode,
+I intended an Ode;
+But Rose crossed the road
+In her latest new bonnet;
+I intended an Ode;
+And it turned to a Sonnet.
+
+Austin Dobson [1840-1921]
+
+
+A CORSAGE BOUQUET
+
+Myrtilla, to-night,
+Wears Jacqueminot roses.
+She's the loveliest sight!
+Myrtilla to-night: -
+Correspondingly light
+My pocket-book closes.
+Myrtilla, to-night
+Wears Jacqueminot roses.
+
+Charles Henry Luders [1858-1891]
+
+
+TWO TRIOLETS
+
+What he said: -
+This kiss upon your fan I press - 
+Ah! Sainte Nitouche, you don't refuse it!
+And may it from its soft recess -
+This kiss upon your fan I press -
+Be blown to you, a shy caress,
+By this white down, whene'er you use it.
+This kiss upon your fan I press, -
+Ah, Sainte Nitouche, you don't refuse it!
+
+What she thought: -
+To kiss a fan!
+What a poky poet!
+The stupid man
+To kiss a fan
+When he knows - that - he - can -
+Or ought to know it -
+To kiss a fan!
+What a poky poet!
+
+Harrison Robertson [1856-
+
+
+THE BALLAD OF DEAD LADIES
+From The French Of Francois Villon 1450
+
+Tell me now in what hidden way is
+Lady Flora the lovely Roman?
+Where's Hipparchia, and where is Thais,
+Neither of them the fairer woman?
+Where is Echo, beheld of no man,
+Only heard on river and mere, -
+She whose beauty was more than human? . . .
+But where are the snows of yester-year?
+
+Where's Heloise, the learned nun,
+For whose sake Abeilard, I ween,
+Lost manhood and put priesthood on?
+(From Love he won such dule and teen!)
+And where, I pray you, is the Queen
+Who willed that Buridan should steer
+Sewed in a sack's mouth down the Seine? . . .
+But where are the snows of yester-year?
+
+White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies,
+With a voice like any mermaiden, -
+Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice,
+And Ermengarde the lady of Maine, -
+And that good Joan whom Englishmen
+At Rouen doomed and burned her there, -
+Mother of God, where are they then? . . .
+But where are the snows of yester-year?
+
+Nay, never ask this week, fair lord,
+Where they are gone, nor yet this year,
+Except with this for an overword, -
+But where are the snows of yester-year?
+
+Dante Gabriel Rossetti [1828-1882]
+
+
+BALLADE OF DEAD LADIES
+After Villon
+
+Nay, tell me now in what strange air
+The Roman Flora dwells to-day,
+Where Archippiada hides, and where
+Beautiful Thais has passed away?
+Whence answers Echo, afield, astray,
+By mere or stream, - around, below?
+Lovelier she than a woman of clay;
+Nay, but where is the last year's snow?
+
+Where is wise Heloise, that care
+Brought on Abeilard, and dismay?
+All for her love he found a snare,
+A maimed poor monk in orders gray;
+And where's the Queen who willed to slay
+Buridan, that in a sack must go
+Afloat down Seine, - a perilous way -
+Nay, but where is the last year's snow?
+
+Where's that White Queen, a lily rare,
+With her sweet song, the Siren's lay?
+Where's Bertha Broad-foot, Beatrice fair?
+Alys and Ermengarde, where are they?
+Good Joan, whom English did betray
+In Rouen town, and burned her?  No,
+Maiden and Queen, no man may say;
+Nay, but where is the last year's snow?
+
+ENVOY
+Prince, all this week thou needst not pray,
+Nor yet this year the thing to know.
+One burden answers, ever and aye,
+"Nay, but where is the last year's snow?"
+
+Andrew Lang [1844-1912]
+
+
+A BALLAD OF DEAD LADIES
+After Villon
+From "If I Were King"
+
+I wonder in what Isle of Bliss
+Apollo's music fills the air;
+In what green valley Artemis
+For young Endymion spreads the snare:
+Where Venus lingers debonair:
+The Wind has blown them all away -
+And Pan lies piping in his lair -
+Where are the Gods of Yesterday?
+
+Say where the great Semiramis
+Sleeps in a rose-red tomb; and where
+The precious dust of Caesar is,
+Or Cleopatra's yellow hair:
+Where Alexander Do-and-Dare;
+The Wind has blown them all away -
+And Redbeard of the Iron Chair;
+Where are the Dreams of Yesterday?
+
+Where is the Queen of Herod's kiss,
+And Phryne in her beauty bare;
+By what strange sea does Tomyris
+With Dido and Cassandra share
+Divine Proserpina's despair;
+The Wind has blown them all away -
+For what poor ghost does Helen care?
+Where are the Girls of Yesterday?
+
+ENVOY
+Alas for lovers!  Pair by pair
+The Wind has blown them all away:
+The young and yare, the fond and fair:
+Where are the Snows of Yesterday?
+
+Justin Huntly McCarthy [1860-1936]
+
+
+IF I WERE KING
+After Villon
+From "If I Were King"
+
+All French folk, whereso'er ye be,
+Who love your country, sail and sand,
+From Paris to the Breton sea,
+And back again to Norman strand,
+Forsooth ye seem a silly band,
+Sheep without shepherd, left to chance -
+Far otherwise our Fatherland,
+If Villon were the King of France!
+
+The figure on the throne you see
+Is nothing but a puppet, planned
+To wear the regal bravery
+Of silken coat and gilded wand.
+Not so we Frenchmen understand
+The Lord of lion's heart and glance,
+And such a one would take command
+If Villon were the King of France!
+
+His counsellors are rogues, Perdie!
+While men of honest mind are banned
+To creak upon the Gallows Tree,
+Or squeal in prisons over-manned
+We want a chief to bear the brand,
+And bid the damned Burgundians dance.
+God!  Where the Oriflamme should stand
+If Villon were the King of France!
+
+ENVOY
+Louis the Little, play the grand;
+Buffet the foe with sword and lance;
+'Tis what would happen, by this hand,
+If Villon were the King of France!
+
+Justin Huntly McCarthy [1860-1936]
+
+
+A BALLADE OF SUICIDE
+
+The gallows in my garden, people say,
+Is new and neat and adequately tall.
+I tie the noose on in a knowing way
+As one that knots his necktie for a ball;
+But just as all the neighbors - on the wall -
+Are drawing a long breath to shout "Hurray!"
+The strangest whim has seized me . . . After all
+I think I will not hang myself to-day.
+
+To-morrow is the time I get my pay -
+My uncle's sword is hanging in the hall -
+I see a little cloud all pink and gray -
+Perhaps the rector's mother will not call -
+I fancy that I heard from Mr. Gall
+That mushrooms could be cooked another way -
+I never read the works of Juvenal -
+I think I will not hang myself to-day.
+
+The world will have another washing day;
+The decadents decay; the pedants pall;
+And H. G. Wells has found that children play,
+And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall;
+Rationalists are growing rational -
+And through thick woods one finds a stream astray,
+So secret that the very sky seems small -
+I think I will not hang myself to-day.
+
+ENVOI
+Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal,
+The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way;
+Even to-day your royal head may fall -
+I think I will not hang myself to-day.
+
+Gilbert Keith Chesterton [1874-1936]
+
+
+CHIFFONS!
+
+Through this our city of delight,
+This Paris of our joy and play,
+This Paris perfumed, jeweled, bright,
+Rouged, powdered, amorous, - ennuye:
+Across our gilded Quartier,
+So fair to see, so frail au fond,
+Echoes - mon Dieu! - the Ragman's bray:
+"Mar - chand d'ha - bits!  Chif - fons!"
+
+Foul, hunched, a plague to dainty sight,
+He limps infect by park and quai,
+Voicing (for those that hear aright)
+His hunger-world, the dark Marais.
+Sexton of all we waste and fray,
+He bags at last pour tout de bon
+Our trappings rare, our braveries gay,
+"Mar - chand d'ha - bits!  Chif - fons!"
+
+Their lot is ours!  A grislier wight,
+The Ragman Time, takes day by day
+Our beauty's bloom, our manly might,
+Our joie de vivre, our gods of clay;
+Till torn and worn and soiled and gray
+Hot life rejects us - nom de nom! -
+Rags! and our only requiem lay,
+"Mar - chand d'ha - bits!  Chif - fons!"
+
+
+ENVOY
+Princes take heed! - for where are they,
+Valois, Navarre and Orleans? . . .
+Death drones the answer, far away,
+"Mar - chand d'ha - bits!  Chif - fons!"
+
+William Samuel Johnson [1859-
+
+
+THE COURT HISTORIAN
+Lower Empire. Circa A. D. 700
+
+The Monk Arnulphus uncorked his ink
+That shone with a blood-red light
+Just now as the sun began to sink;
+His vellum was pumiced a silvery white;
+"The Basileus" - for so he began -
+"Is a royal sagacious Mars of a man,
+Than the very lion bolder;
+He has married the stately widow of Thrace -"
+"Hush!" cried a voice at his shoulder.
+
+His palette gleamed with a burnished green,
+Bright as a dragon-fly's skin:
+His gold-leaf shone like the robe of a queen,
+His azure glowed as a cloud worn thin,
+Deep as the blue of the king-whale's lair:
+"The Porphyrogenita Zoe the fair
+Is about to wed with a Prince much older,
+Of an unpropitious mien and look -"
+"Hush!" cried a voice at his shoulder.
+
+The red flowers trellised the parchment page,
+The birds leaped up on the spray,
+The yellow fruit swayed and drooped and swung,
+It was Autumn mixed up with May.
+(O, but his cheek was shrivelled and shrunk!)
+"The child of the Basileus," wrote the Monk,
+"Is golden-haired - tender the Queen's arms fold her.
+Her step-mother Zoe doth love her so -"
+"Hush!" cried a voice at his shoulder.
+
+The Kings and Martyrs and Saints and Priests
+All gathered to guard the text:
+There was Daniel snug in the lions' den
+Singing no whit perplexed -
+Brazen Samson with spear and helm -
+"The Queen," wrote the Monk, "rules firm this realm,
+For the King gets older and older.
+The Norseman Thorkill is brave and fair -"
+"Hush!" cried a voice at his shoulder.
+
+Walter Thornbury [1828-1876]
+
+
+MISS LOU
+
+When thin-strewn memory I look through,
+I see most clearly poor Miss Loo,
+Her tabby cat, her cage of birds,
+Her nose, her hair - her muffled words,
+And how she would open her green eyes,
+As if in some immense surprise,
+Whenever as we sat at tea,
+She made some small remark to me.
+
+'Tis always drowsy summer when
+From out the past she comes again;
+The westering sunshine in a pool
+Floats in her parlor still and cool;
+While the slim bird its lean wires shakes,
+As into piercing song it breaks;
+Till Peter's pale-green eyes ajar
+Dream, wake; wake, dream, in one brief bar;
+And I am sitting, dull and shy,
+And she with gaze of vacancy,
+
+And large hands folded on the tray,
+Musing the afternoon away;
+Her satin bosom heaving slow
+With sighs that softly ebb and flow,
+And her plain face in such dismay,
+It seems unkind to look her way;
+Until all cheerful back will come
+Her gentle gleaming spirit home:
+And one would think that poor Miss Loo
+Asked nothing else, if she had you.
+
+Walter De la Mare [1873-
+
+
+THE POET AND THE WOOD-LOUSE
+
+A portly Wood-louse, full of cares,
+Transacted eminent affairs
+Along a parapet where pears
+Unripened fell
+And vines embellished the sweet airs
+With muscatel.
+
+Day after day beheld him run
+His scales a-twinkle in the sun
+About his business never done;
+Night's slender span he
+Spent in the home his wealth had won -
+A red-brick cranny.
+
+Thus, as his Sense of Right directed,
+He lived both honored and respected,
+Cherished his children and protected
+His duteous wife,
+And naught of diffidence deflected
+His useful life.
+
+One mid-day, hastening to his Club,
+He spied beside a water-tub
+The owner of each plant and shrub
+A humble Bard -
+Who turned upon the conscious grub
+A mild regard.
+
+"Eh?" quoth the Wood-louse, "Can it be
+A Higher Power looks down to see
+My praiseworthy activity
+And notes me plying
+My Daily Task? - Nor strange, dear me,
+But gratifying!"
+
+To whom the Bard: I still divest
+My orchard of the Insect Pest,
+That you are such is manifest,
+Prepare to die. -
+And yet, how sweetly does your crest
+Reflect the sky!
+
+"Go then forgiven, (for what ails
+Your naughty life this fact avails
+Tu pardon) mirror in your scales
+Celestial blue,
+Till the sun sets and the light fails
+The skies and you."
+
+.   .   .   .   .   .   .
+
+May all we proud and bustling parties
+Whose lot in forum, street and mart is
+Stand in conspectu Deitatis
+And save our face,
+Reflecting where our scaly heart is
+Some skyey grace.
+
+Helen Parry Eden [18
+
+
+STUDENTS
+
+John Brown and Jeanne at Fontainebleau -
+'Twas Toussaint, just a year ago;
+Crimson and copper was the glow
+Of all the woods at Fontainebleau.
+They peered into that ancient well,
+And watched the slow torch as it fell.
+John gave the keeper two whole sous,
+And Jeanne that smile with which she woos
+John Brown to folly.  So they lose
+The Paris train.  But never mind! -
+All-Saints are rustling in the wind,
+And there's an inn, a crackling fire -
+It's deux-cinquante, but Jeanne's desire);
+There's dinner, candles, country wine,
+Jeanne's lips - philosophy divine!
+There was a bosquet at Saint Cloud
+Wherein John's picture of her grew
+To be a Salon masterpiece -
+Till the rain fell that would not cease.
+Through one long alley how they raced! -
+'Twas gold and brown, and all a waste
+Of matted leaves, moss-interlaced.
+Shades of mad queens and hunter-kings
+And thorn-sharp feet of dryad-things
+Were company to their wanderings;
+Then rain and darkness on them drew.
+The rich folks' motors honked and flew.
+They hailed an old cab, heaven for two;
+The bright Champs-Elysees at last -
+Though the cab crawled it sped too fast.
+
+Paris, upspringing white and gold:
+Flamboyant arch and high-enscrolled
+War-sculpture, big, Napoleonic -
+Fierce chargers, angels histrionic;
+The royal sweep of gardened spaces,
+The pomp and whirl of columned Places;
+The Rive Gauche, age-old, gay and gray;
+The impasse and the loved cafe;
+The tempting tidy little shops;
+The convent walls, the glimpsed tree-tops;
+Book-stalls, old men like dwarfs in plays;
+Talk, work, and Latin Quarter ways.
+
+May - Robinson's, the chestnut trees -
+Were ever crowds as gay as these?
+The quick pale waiters on a run,
+The round green tables, one by one,
+Hidden away in amorous bowers -
+Lilac, laburnum's golden showers.
+Kiss, clink of glasses, laughter heard,
+And nightingales quite undeterred.
+And then that last extravagance -
+O Jeanne, a single amber glance
+Will pay him! - "Let's play millionaire
+For just two hours - on princely fare,
+At some hotel where lovers dine
+A deux and pledge across the wine."
+They find a damask breakfast-room,
+Where stiff silk roses range their bloom.
+The garcon has a splendid way
+Of bearing in grand dejeuner.
+Then to be left alone, alone,
+High up above Rue Castiglione;
+Curtained away from all the rude
+Rumors, in silken solitude;
+And, John, her head upon your knees -
+Time waits for moments such as these.
+
+Florence Wilkinson [18
+
+
+"ONE, TWO, THREE!"
+
+It was an old, old, old, old lady,
+And a boy that was half-past three;
+And the way that they played together
+Was beautiful to see.
+
+She couldn't go running and jumping,
+And the boy, no more could he;
+For he was a thin little fellow,
+With a thin little twisted knee.
+
+They sat in the yellow sunlight,
+Out under the maple tree;
+And the game that they played I'll tell you,
+Just as it was told to me.
+
+It was Hide-and-Go-Seek they were playing,
+Though you'd never have known it to be -
+With an old, old, old, old lady,
+And a boy with a twisted knee.
+
+The boy would bend his face down
+On his one little sound right knee,
+And he'd guess where she was hiding,
+In guesses One, Two, Three!
+
+"You are in the china-closet!"
+He would cry, and laugh with glee -
+It wasn't the china closet,
+But he still had Two and Three.
+
+"You are up in papa's big bedroom,
+In the chest with the queer old key!"
+And she said: "You are warm and warmer;
+But you're not quite right," said she.
+
+"It can't be the little cupboard
+Where mamma's things used to be -
+So it must be the clothes-press, Gran'ma!"
+And he found her with his Three.
+
+Then she covered her face with her fingers,
+That were wrinkled and white and wee,
+And she guessed where the boy was hiding,
+With a One and a Two and a Three.
+
+And they never had stirred from their places,
+Right under the maple tree -
+This old, old, old, old lady
+And the boy with the lame little knee -
+This dear, dear, dear old lady,
+And the boy who was half-past three.
+
+Henry Cuyler Bunner [1855-1896]
+
+
+THE CHAPERON
+
+I take my chaperon to the play -
+She thinks she's taking me.
+And the gilded youth who owns the box,
+A proud young man is he;
+But how would his young heart be hurt
+If he could only know
+That not for his sweet sake I go
+Nor yet to see the trifling show;
+But to see my chaperon flirt.
+
+Her eyes beneath her snowy hair
+They sparkle young as mine;
+There's scarce a wrinkle in her hand
+So delicate and fine.
+And when my chaperon is seen,
+They come from everywhere -
+The dear old boys with silvery hair,
+With old-time grace and old-time air,
+To greet their old-time queen.
+
+They bow as my young Midas here
+Will never learn to bow
+(The dancing-masters do not teach
+That gracious reverence now);
+With voices quavering just a bit,
+They play their old parts through,
+They talk of folk who used to woo,
+Of hearts that broke in 'fifty-two -
+Now none the worse for it.
+
+And as those aged crickets chirp,
+I watch my chaperon's face,
+And see the dear old features take
+A new and tender grace;
+And in her happy eyes I see
+Her youth awakening bright,
+With all its hope, desire, delight -
+Ah, me!  I wish that I were quite
+As young - as young as she!
+
+Henry Cuyler Bunner [1855-1896]
+
+
+"A PITCHER OF MIGNONETTE"
+
+A pitcher of mignonette
+In a tenement's highest casement, -
+Queer sort of flower-pot - yet
+That pitcher of mignonette
+Is a garden in heaven set,
+To the little sick child in the basement -
+The pitcher of mignonette,
+In the tenement's highest casement.
+
+Henry Cuyler Bunner [1855-1896]
+
+
+OLD KING COLE
+
+In Tilbury Town did Old King Cole
+A wise old age anticipate,
+Desiring, with his pipe and bowl,
+No Khan's extravagant estate.
+No crown annoyed his honest head,
+No fiddlers three were called or needed;
+For two disastrous heirs instead
+Made music more that ever three did.
+
+Bereft of her with whom his life
+Was harmony without a flaw,
+He took no other for a wife,
+Nor sighed for any that he saw;
+And if he doubted his two sons,
+And heirs, Alexis and Evander,
+He might have been as doubtful once
+Of Robert Burns and Alexander.
+
+Alexis, in his early youth,
+Began to steal - from old and young.
+Likewise Evander, and the truth
+Was like a bad taste on his tongue.
+Born thieves and liars, their affair
+Seemed only to be tarred with evil -
+The most insufferable pair
+Of scamps that ever cheered the devil.
+
+The world went on, their fame went on,
+And they went on - from bad to worse;
+Till, goaded hot with nothing done,
+And each accoutered with a curse,
+The friends of Old King Cole, by twos,
+And fours, and sevens, and elevens,
+Pronounced unalterable views
+Of doings that were not of Heaven's. 
+
+And having learned again whereby
+Their baleful zeal had come about,
+King Cole met many a wrathful eye
+So kindly that its wrath went out -
+Or partly out.  Say what they would,
+He seemed the more to court their candor,
+But never told what kind of good
+Was in Alexis and Evander.
+
+And Old King Cole, with many a puff
+That haloed his urbanity,
+Would smoke till he had smoked enough, 
+And listen most attentively.
+He beamed as with an inward light
+That had the Lord's assurance in it; 
+And once a man was there all night,
+Expecting something every minute.
+
+But whether from too little thought,
+Or too much fealty to the bowl,
+A dim reward was all he got
+For sitting up with Old King Cole.
+"Though mine," the father mused aloud,
+"Are not the sons I would have chosen,
+Shall I, less evilly endowed, 
+By their infirmity be frozen?
+
+"They'll have a bad end, I'll agree,
+But I was never born to groan;
+For I can see what I can see,
+And I'm accordingly alone.
+With open heart and open door,
+I love my friends, I like my neighbors;
+But if I try to tell you more,
+Your doubts will overmatch my labors.
+
+"This pipe would never make me calm,
+This bowl my grief would never drown.
+For grief like mine there is no balm
+In Gilead, or in Tilbury Town.
+And if I see what I can see,
+I know not any way to blind it;
+Nor more if any way may be
+For you to grope or fly to find it.
+
+"There may be room for ruin yet,
+And ashes for a wasted love; 
+Or, like One whom you may forget,
+I may have meat you know not of.
+And if I'd rather live than weep
+Meanwhile, do you find that surprising?
+Why, bless my soul, the man's asleep!
+That's good.  The sun will soon be rising."
+
+Edwin Arlington Robinson [1869-1935]
+
+
+THE MASTER MARINER
+
+My grandshire sailed three years from home,
+And slew unmoved the sounding whale:
+Here on the windless beach I roam
+And watch far out the hardy sail.
+
+The lions of the surf that cry
+Upon this lion-colored shore
+On reefs of midnight met his eye:
+He knew their fangs as I their roar.
+
+My grandsire sailed uncharted seas,
+And toll of all their leagues he took:
+I scan the shallow bays at ease,
+And tell their colors in a book.
+
+The anchor-chains his music made
+And wind in shrouds and running-gear:
+The thrush at dawn beguiles my glade,
+And once, 'tis said, I woke to hear. 
+
+My grandsire in his ample fist 
+The long harpoon upheld to men: 
+Behold obedient to my wrist
+A gray gull's-feather for my pen!
+
+Upon my grandsire's leathern cheek
+Five zones their bitter bronze had set:
+Some day their hazards I will seek,
+I promise me at times.  Not yet.
+
+I think my grandsire now would turn
+A mild but speculative eye
+On me, my pen and its concern,
+Then gaze again to sea - and sigh.
+
+George Sterling [1869-1926]
+
+
+A ROSE TO THE LIVING
+
+A rose to the living is more
+Than sumptuous wreaths to the dead:
+In filling love's infinite store,
+A rose to the living is more, -
+If graciously given before
+The hungering spirit is fled, -
+A rose to the living is more
+Than sumptuous wreaths to the dead.
+
+Nixon Waterman [1859-
+
+
+A KISS
+
+Rose kissed me to-day.
+Will she kiss me to-morrow?
+Let it be as it may,
+Rose kissed me to-day
+But the pleasure gives way
+To a savor of sorrow; -
+Rose kissed me to-day, -
+Will she kiss me to-morrow?
+
+Austin Dobson [1840-1921]
+
+
+BIFTEK AUX CHAMPIGNONS
+
+Mimi, do you remember -
+Don't get behind your fan -
+That morning in September
+On the cliffs of Grand Manan,
+Where to the shock of Fundy
+The topmost harebells sway
+(Campanula rotundi-
+folia: cf. Gray)?
+
+On the pastures high and level,
+That overlook the sea,
+Where I wondered what the devil
+Those little things could be
+That Mimi stooped to gather,
+As she strolled across the down,
+And held her dress skirt rather -
+Oh, now, you need n't frown.
+
+For you know the dew was heavy,
+And your boots, I know, were thin;
+So a little extra brevi-
+ty in skirts was, sure, no sin.
+Besides, who minds a cousin?
+First, second, even third, -
+I've kissed 'em by the dozen,
+And they never once demurred.
+
+"If one's allowed to ask it,"
+Quoth I, " ma belle cousine,
+What have you in your basket?"
+(Those baskets white and green
+The brave Passamaquoddies
+Weave out of scented grass,
+And sell to tourist bodies
+Who through Mt. Desert pass.)
+
+You answered, slightly frowning,
+"Put down your stupid book -
+That everlasting Browning! -
+And come and help me look.
+Mushroom you spik him English,
+I call him champignon:
+I'll teach you to distinguish
+The right kind from the wrong."
+
+There was no fog on Fundy
+That blue September day;
+The west wind, for that one day,
+Had swept it all away.
+The lighthouse glasses twinkled,
+The white gulls screamed and flew,
+The merry sheep-bells tinkled,
+The merry breezes blew.
+
+The bayberry aromatic,
+The papery immortelle,
+(That give our grandma's attic
+That sentimental smell,
+Tied up in little brush-brooms)
+Were sweet as new-mown hay,
+While we went hunting mushrooms
+That blue September day.
+
+Henry Augustin Beers [1847-1926]
+
+
+EVOLUTION
+
+When you were a Tadpole and I was a Fish,
+In the Paleozoic time,
+And side by side on the ebbing tide,
+We sprawled through the ooze and slime,
+Or skittered with many a caudal flip
+Through the depths of the Cambrian fen -
+My heart was rife with the joy of life,
+For I loved you even then.
+
+Mindless we lived, mindless we loved,
+And mindless at last we died;
+And deep in the rift of a Caradoc drift
+We slumbered side by side.
+The world turned on in the lathe of time,
+The hot sands heaved amain,
+Till we caught our breath from the womb of death,
+And crept into life again.
+
+We were Amphibians, scaled and tailed,
+And drab as a dead man's hand.
+We coiled at ease 'neath the dripping trees
+Or trailed through the mud and sand,
+Croaking and blind, with our three-clawed feet,
+Writing a language dumb,
+With never a spark in the empty dark
+To hint at a life to come.
+
+Yet happy we lived, and happy we loved,
+And happy we died once more.
+Our forms were rolled in the clinging mold
+Of a Neocomian shore.
+The aeons came and the aeons fled,
+And the sleep that wrapped us fast
+Was riven away in a newer day,
+And the night of death was past.
+
+Then light and swift through the jungle trees
+We swung in our airy flights,
+Or breathed the balms of the fronded palms 
+In the hush of the moonless nights.
+And oh, what beautiful years were these
+When our hearts clung each to each;
+When life was filled and our senses thrilled
+In the first faint dawn of speech!
+
+Thus life by life, and love by love,
+We passed through the cycles strange,
+And breath by breath, and death by death,
+We followed the chain of change.
+Till there came a time in the law of life
+When over the nursing sod
+The shadows broke, and the soul awoke
+In a strange, dim dream of God.
+
+I was thewed like an Aurocks bull
+And tusked like the great Cave-Bear,
+And you, my sweet, from head to feet,
+Were gowned in your glorious hair.
+Deep in the gloom of a fireless cave,
+When the night fell o'er the plain,
+And the moon hung red o'er the river bed,
+We mumbled the bones of the slain.
+
+I flaked a flint to a cutting edge,
+And shaped it with brutish craft;
+I broke a shank from the woodland dank,
+And fitted it, head to haft.
+Then I hid me close in the reedy tarn,
+Where the Mammoth came to drink -
+Through brawn and bone I drave the stone,
+And slew him upon the brink.
+
+Loud I howled through the moonlit wastes,
+Loud answered our kith and kin;
+From west and east to the crimson feast
+The clan came trooping in.
+O'er joint and gristle and padded hoof,
+We fought and clawed and tore,
+And cheek by jowl, with many a growl,
+We talked the marvel o'er.
+
+I carved that fight on a reindeer bone
+With rude and hairy hand;
+I pictured his fall on the cavern wall
+That men might understand.
+For we lived by blood and the right of might,
+Ere human laws were drawn,
+And the Age of Sin did not begin
+Till our brutal tusks were gone.
+
+And that was a million years ago,
+In a time that no man knows;
+Yet here to-night in the mellow light,
+We sit at Delmonico's.
+Your eyes are deep as the Devon springs,
+Your hair is as dark as jet,
+Your years are few, your life is new,
+Your soul untried, and yet -
+
+Our trail is on the Kimmeridge clay,
+And the scarp of the Purbeck flags;
+We have left our bones in the Bagshot stones,
+And deep in the Coralline crags.
+Our love is old, and our lives are old,
+And death shall come amain.
+Should it come to-day, what man may say
+We shall not live again?
+
+God wrought our souls from the Tremadoc beds
+And furnished them wings to fly;
+He sowed our spawn in the world's dim dawn,
+And I know that it shall not die;
+Though cities have sprung above the graves
+Where the crook-boned men made war,
+And the ox-wain creaks o'er the buried caves
+Where the mummied mammoths are.
+
+Then, as we linger at luncheon here,
+O'er many a dainty dish,
+Let us drink anew to the time when you
+Were a Tadpole and I was a Fish.
+
+Langdon Smith [1858-1908]
+
+
+A REASONABLE AFFLICTION
+
+On his death-bed poor Lubin lies:
+His spouse is in despair;
+With frequent cries, and mutual sighs,
+They both express their care.
+
+"A different cause," says Parson Sly,
+"The same effect may give:
+Poor Lubin fears that he may die;
+His wife, that he may live."
+
+Matthew Prior [1664-1721]
+
+
+A MORAL IN SEVRES
+
+Upon my mantel-piece they stand,
+While all its length between them lies;
+He throws a kiss with graceful hand,
+She glances back with bashful eyes.
+
+The china Shepherdess is fair,
+The Shepherd's face denotes a heart
+Burning with ardor and despair.
+Alas, they stand so far apart!
+
+And yet, perhaps, if they were moved,
+And stood together day by day,
+Their love had not so constant proved,
+Nor would they still have smiled so gay.
+
+His hand the Shepherd might have kissed
+The match-box Angel's heart to win;
+The Shepherdess, his love have missed,
+And flirted with the Mandarin.
+
+But on my mantel-piece they stand,
+While all its length between them lies;
+He throws a kiss with graceful hand,
+She glances back with bashful eyes.
+
+Mildred Howells [1872- 
+
+
+ON THE FLY-LEAF OF A BOOK OF OLD PLAYS
+
+At Cato's Head in Russell Street
+These leaves she sat a-stitching;
+I fancy she was trim and neat,
+Blue-eyed and quite bewitching.
+
+Before her on the street below,
+All powder, ruffs, and laces,
+There strutted idle London beaux
+To ogle pretty faces;
+
+While, filling many a Sedan chair
+With monstrous hoop and feather,
+In paint and powder London's fair
+Went trooping past together.
+
+Swift, Addison, and Pope, mayhap
+They sauntered slowly past her,
+Or printer's boy, with gown and cap,
+For Steele, went trotting faster.
+
+For beau nor wit had she a look;
+Nor lord nor lady minding,
+She bent her head above this book,
+Attentive to her binding.
+
+And one stray thread of golden hair,
+Caught on her nimble fingers,
+Was stitched within this volume, where
+Until to-day it lingers.
+
+Past and forgotten, beaux and fair,
+Wigs, powder, all outdated;
+A queer antique, the Sedan chair,
+Pope, stiff and antiquated.
+
+Yet as I turn these odd, old plays,
+This single stray lock finding,
+I'm back in those forgotten days,
+And watch her at her binding.
+
+Walter Learned [1847-1915]
+
+
+THE TALENTED MAN
+Letter From A Lady In London To A Lady At Lausanne
+
+Dear Alice! you'll laugh when you know it, -
+Last week, at the Duchess's ball,
+I danced with the clever new poet, -
+You've heard of him, - Tully St. Paul.
+Miss Jonquil was perfectly frantic;
+I wish you had seen Lady Anne!
+It really was very romantic,
+He is such a talented man!
+
+He came up from Brazen Nose College,
+Just caught, as they call it, this spring;
+And his head, love, is stuffed full of knowledge
+Of every conceivable thing.
+Of science and logic he chatters,
+As fine and as fast as he can;
+Though I am no judge of such matters,
+I'm sure he's a talented man.
+
+His stories and jests are delightful; -
+Not stories or jests, dear, for you;
+The jests are exceedingly spiteful,
+The stories not always quite true.
+Perhaps to be kind and veracious
+May do pretty well at Lausanne;
+But it never would answer, - good gracious!
+Chez nous - in a talented man.
+
+He sneers, - how my Alice would scold him! -
+At the bliss of a sigh or a tear;
+He laughed - only think! - when I told him
+How we cried o'er Trevelyan last year;
+I vow I was quite in a passion;
+I broke all the sticks of my fan;
+But sentiment's quite out of fashion,
+It seems, in a talented man.
+
+Lady Bab, who is terribly moral,
+Has told me that Tully is vain,
+And apt - which is silly - to quarrel,
+And fond - which is sad - of champagne.
+I listened, and doubted, dear Alice,
+For I saw, when my Lady began,
+It was only the Dowager's malice; -
+She does hate a talented man!
+
+He's hideous, I own it.  But fame, love,
+Is all that these eyes can adore;
+He's lame, - but Lord Byron was lame, love,
+And dumpy, - but so is Tom Moore.
+Then his voice, - such a voice! my sweet creature,
+It's like your Aunt Lucy's toucan:
+But oh! what's a tone or a feature,
+When once one's a talented man?
+
+My mother, you know, all the season,
+Has talked of Sir Geoffrey's estate;
+And truly, to do the fool reason,
+He has been less horrid of late.
+But to-day, when we drive in the carriage,
+I'll tell her to lay down her plan; -
+If ever I venture on marriage,
+It must be a talented man!
+
+P.S. - I have found, on reflection,
+One fault in my friend, - entre nous;
+Without it, he'd just be perfection; -
+Poor fellow, he has not a sou!
+And so, when he comes in September
+To shoot with my uncle, Sir Dan,
+I've promised mamma to remember
+He's only a talented man!
+
+Winthrop Mackworth Praed [1802-1839]
+
+
+A LETTER OF ADVICE
+From Miss Medora Trevilian, At Padua,
+To Miss Araminta Vavasour, In London
+
+"Enfin, Monsieur, homme aimable;
+Voila pourquoi je ne saurais l'aimer." - Scribe
+
+You tell me you're promised a lover,
+My own Araminta, next week;
+Why cannot my fancy discover
+The hue of his coat, and his cheek?
+Alas! if he look like another,
+A vicar, a banker, a beau,
+Be deaf to your father and mother,
+My own Araminta, say "No!"
+
+Miss Lane, at her Temple of Fashion,
+Taught us both how to sing and to speak,
+And we loved one another with passion,
+Before we had been there a week:
+You gave me a ring for a token;
+I wear it wherever I go;
+I gave you a chain, - it is broken?
+My own Araminta, say "No!"
+
+O think of our favorite cottage,
+And think of our dear Lalla Rookh!
+How we shared with the milkmaids their pottage,
+And drank of the stream from the brook;
+How fondly our loving lips faltered,
+"What further can grandeur bestow?"
+My heart is the same; - is yours altered?
+My own Araminta, say "No!"
+
+Remember the thrilling romances
+We read on the bank in the glen;
+Remember the suitors our fancies
+Would picture for both of us then;
+They wore the red cross on their shoulder,
+They had vanquished and pardoned their foe - 
+Sweet friend, are you wiser or colder?
+My own Araminta, say "No!"
+
+You know, when Lord Rigmarole's carriage,
+Drove off with your cousin Justine,
+You wept, dearest girl, at the marriage,
+And whispered "How base she has been!"
+You said you were sure it would kill you,
+If ever your husband looked so;
+And you will not apostatize, - will you?
+My own Araminta, say "No!"
+
+When I heard I was going abroad, love,
+I thought I was going to die;
+We walked arm in arm to the road, love,
+We looked arm in arm to the sky;
+And I said, "When a foreign postilion
+Has hurried me off to the Po,
+Forget not Medora Trevilian: -
+My own Araminta, say "No!"
+
+We parted! but sympathy's fetters
+Reach far over valley and hill;
+I muse o'er your exquisite letters,
+And feel that your heart is mine still;
+And he who would share it with me, love, -
+The richest of treasures below, -
+If he's not what Orlando should be, love,
+My own Araminta, say "No!"
+
+If he wears a top-boot in his wooing,
+If he comes to you riding a cob,
+If he talks of his baking or brewing,
+If he puts up his feet on the hob,
+If he ever drinks port after dinner,
+If his brow or his breeding is low,
+If he calls himself "Thompson" or "Skinner,"
+My own Araminta, say "No!"
+
+If he studies the news in the papers
+While you are preparing the tea,
+If he talks of the damps or the vapors
+While moonlight lies soft on the sea,
+If he's sleepy while you are capricious,
+If he has not a musical "Oh!"
+If he does not call Werther delicious, -
+My own Araminta, say "No!"
+
+If he ever Sets foot in the city
+Among the stockbrokers and Jews,
+If he has not a heart full of pity,
+If he don't stand six feet in his shoes,
+If his lips are not redder than roses,
+If his hands are not whiter than snow,
+If he has not the model of noses, -
+My own Araminta, say "No!"
+
+If he speaks of a tax or a duty,
+If he does not look grand on his knees,
+If he's blind to a landscape of beauty,
+Hills, valleys, rocks, waters, and trees,
+If he dotes not on desolate towers,
+If he likes not to hear the blast blow,
+If he knows not the language of flowers, -
+My own Araminta, say "No!"
+
+He must walk like a god of old story
+Come down from the home of his rest;
+He must smile like the sun in his glory
+On the buds he loves ever the best;
+And oh! from its ivory portal
+Like music his soft speech must flow! -
+If he speak, smile, or walk like a mortal, 
+My own Araminta, say "No!" 
+
+Don't listen to tales of his bounty,
+Don't hear what they say of his birth,
+Don't look at his seat in the county,
+Don't calculate what he is worth;
+But give him a theme to write verse on,
+And see if he turns out his toe; -
+If he's only an excellent person,
+My own Araminta, say "No!"
+
+Winthrop Mackworth Praed [1802-1839]
+
+
+A NICE CORRESPONDENT
+
+"There are plenty of roses" (the patriarch speaks)
+"Alas not for me, on your lips and your cheeks;
+Fair maiden rose-laden enough and to spare,
+Spare, spare me that rose that you wear in your hair."
+
+The glow and the glory are plighted
+To darkness, for evening is come;
+The lamp in Glebe Cottage is lighted,
+The birds and the sheep-bells are dumb.
+I'm alone, for the others have flitted
+To dine with a neighbor at Kew:
+Alone, but I'm not to be pitied -
+I'm thinking of you!
+
+I wish you were here!  Were I duller
+Than dull, you'd be dearer than dear;
+I am dressed in your favorite color -
+Dear Fred, how I wish you were here!
+I am wearing my lazuli necklace,
+The necklace you fastened askew!
+Was there ever so rude or so reckless
+A Darling as you?
+
+I want you to come and pass sentence
+On two or three books with a plot;
+Of course you know "Janet's Repentance"?
+I am reading Sir Waverley Scott.
+That story of Edgar and Lucy,
+How thrilling, romantic, and true!
+The Master (his bride was a goosey!)
+Reminds me of you.
+
+They tell me Cockaigne has been crowning
+A Poet whose garland endures; -
+It was you that first told me of Browning, -
+That stupid old Browning of yours!
+His vogue and his verve are alarming,
+I'm anxious to give him his due;
+But, Fred, he's not nearly so charming
+A Poet as you!
+
+I heard how you shot at The Beeches,
+I saw how you rode Chanticleer,
+I have read the report of your speeches,
+And echoed the echoing cheer.
+There's a whisper of hearts you are breaking,
+Dear Fred, I believe it, I do!
+Small marvel that Folly is making
+Her Idol of you!
+
+Alas for the World, and its dearly
+Bought triumph, - its fugitive bliss;
+Sometimes I half wish I were merely
+A plain or a penniless Miss;
+But, perhaps, one is blest with "a measure
+Of pelf," and I'm not sorry, too,
+That I'm pretty, because it's a pleasure,
+My Darling, to you!
+
+Your whim is for frolic and fashion,
+Your taste is for letters and art; -
+This rhyme is the commonplace passion
+That glows in a fond woman's heart:
+Lay it by in some sacred deposit
+For relics - we all have a few!
+Love, some day they'll print it, because it
+Was written to You.
+
+Frederick Locker-Lampson [1821-1895]
+
+
+HER LETTER
+
+I'm sitting alone by the fire,
+Dressed just as I came from the dance,
+In a robe even you would admire, -
+It cost a cool thousand in France;
+I'm be-diamonded out of all reason,
+My hair is done up in a cue:
+In short, sir, "the belle of the season"
+Is wasting an hour upon you.
+
+A dozen engagements I've broken;
+I left in the midst of a set;
+Likewise a proposal, half spoken,
+That waits - on the stairs - for me yet.
+They say he'll be rich, - when he grows up, -
+And then he adores me indeed;
+And you, sir, are turning your nose up,
+Three thousand miles off, as you read.
+
+"And how do I like my position?"
+"And what do I think of New York?"
+"And now, in my higher ambition,
+With whom do I waltz, flirt, or talk?"
+"And isn't it nice to have riches,
+And diamonds and silks, and all that?"
+"And aren't they a change to the ditches
+And tunnels of Poverty Flat?"
+
+Well, yes, - if you saw us out driving
+Each day in the Park, four-in-hand,
+If you saw poor dear mamma contriving
+To look supernaturally grand, -
+If you saw papa's picture, as taken
+By Brady, and tinted at that, -
+You'd never suspect he sold bacon
+And flour at Poverty Flat.
+
+And yet, just this moment, when sitting
+In the glare of the grand chandelier, -
+In the bustle and glitter befitting
+The "finest soiree of the year," -
+In the mists of a gaze de Chambery,
+And the hum of the smallest of talk, -
+Somehow, Joe, I thought of the "Ferry,"
+And the dance that we had on "The Fork;"
+
+Of Harrison's bar, with its muster
+Of flags festooned over the wall;
+Of the candles that shed their soft lustre
+And tallow on head-dress and shawl;
+Of the steps that we took to one fiddle,
+Of the dress of my queer vis-a-vis;
+And how I once went down the middle
+With the man that shot Sandy McGee.
+
+Of the moon that was quietly sleeping
+On the hill, when the time came to go;
+Of the few baby peaks that were peeping
+From under their bedclothes of snow;
+Of that ride, - that to me was the rarest,
+Of - the something you said at the gate.
+Ah! Joe, then I wasn't an heiress
+To "the best-paying lead in the State."
+
+Well, well, it's all past; yet it's funny
+To think, as I stood in the glare
+Of fashion and beauty and money,
+That I should be thinking, right there,
+Of some one who breasted high water,
+And swam the North Fork, and all that,
+Just to dance with old Folinsbee's daughter,
+The Lily of Poverty Flat.
+
+But goodness! what nonsense I'm writing!
+(Mamma says my taste still is low),
+Instead of my triumphs reciting, - 
+I'm spooning on Joseph, - heigh-ho!
+And I'm to be "finished" by travel, -
+Whatever's the meaning of that.
+Oh, why did papa strike pay gravel
+In drifting on Poverty Flat?
+
+Good-night! - here's the end of my paper;
+Good-night! - if the longitude please, -
+For maybe, while wasting my taper,
+Your sun's climbing over the trees.
+But know, if you haven't got riches,
+And are poor, dearest Joe, and all that,
+That my heart's somewhere there in the ditches,
+And you've struck it, - on Poverty Flat
+
+Bret Harte [1830-1902]
+
+
+A DEAD LETTER
+A coeur blesse - l'ombre et le silence. - Balzac 
+
+I
+I drew it from its china tomb; -
+It came out feebly scented
+With some thin ghost of past perfume
+That dust and days had lent it.
+
+An old, old letter, - folded still!
+To read with due composure,
+I sought the sun-lit window-sill,
+Above the gray enclosure,
+
+That, glimmering in the sultry haze,
+Faint-flowered, dimly shaded,
+Slumbered like Goldsmith's Madam Blaize,
+Bedizened and brocaded.
+
+A queer old place!  You'd surely say
+Some tea-board garden-maker
+Had planned it in Dutch William's day
+To please some florist Quaker,
+
+So trim it was.  The yew-trees still,
+With pious care perverted,
+Grew in the same grim shapes; and still
+The lipless dolphin spurted;
+
+Still in his wonted state abode
+The broken-nosed Apollo;
+And still the cypress-arbor showed
+The same umbrageous hollow.
+
+Only, - as fresh young Beauty gleams
+From coffee-colored laces,
+So peeped from its old-fashioned dreams 
+The fresher modern traces;
+
+For idle mallet, hoop, and ball 
+Upon the lawn were lying;
+A magazine, a tumbled shawl,
+Round which the swifts were flying;
+
+And, tossed beside the Guelder rose,
+A heap of rainbow knitting,
+Where, blinking in her pleased repose,
+A Persian cat was sitting.
+
+"A place to love in, - live, - for aye,
+If we too, like Tithonus,
+Could find some God to stretch the gray
+Scant life the Fates have thrown us;
+
+"But now by steam we run our race,
+With buttoned heart and pocket,
+Our Love's a gilded, surplus grace, -
+Just like an empty locket!
+
+"'The time is out of joint.'  Who will,
+May strive to make it better;
+For me, this warm old window-sill,
+And this old dusty letter."
+
+II
+"Dear John (the letter ran), it can't, can't be,
+For Father's gone to Chorley Fair with Sam,
+And Mother's storing Apples, - Prue and Me
+Up to our Elbows making Damson Jam:
+But we shall meet before a Week is gone, -
+''Tis a long Lane that has no Turning,' John!
+
+"Only till Sunday next, and then you'll wait
+Behind the White-Thorn, by the broken Stile -
+We can go round and catch them at the Gate,
+All to Ourselves, for nearly one long Mile;
+Dear Prue won't look, and Father he'll go on,
+And Sam's two Eyes are all for Cissy, John!
+
+"John, she's so smart, - with every Ribbon new,
+Flame-colored Sack, and Crimson Padesoy:
+As proud as proud; and has the Vapors too,
+Just like My Lady; - calls poor Sam a Boy,
+And vows no Sweet-heart's worth the Thinking-on
+Till he's past Thirty . . . I know better, John!
+
+"My Dear, I don't think that I thought of much
+Before we knew each other, I and you;
+And now, why, John, your least, least Finger-touch,
+Gives me enough to think a Summer through.
+See, for I send you Something!  There, 'tis gone!
+Look in this corner, - mind you find it, John!
+
+III
+This was the matter of the note, -
+A long-forgot deposit,
+Dropped in an Indian dragon's throat
+Deep in a fragrant closet,
+
+Piled with a dapper Dresden world, -
+Beaux, beauties, prayers, and poses, -
+Bonzes with squat legs undercurled,
+And great jars filled with roses.
+
+Ah, heart that wrote! Ah, lips that kissed!
+You had no thought or presage
+Into what keeping you dismissed
+Your simple old-world message!
+
+A reverent one.  Though we to-day
+Distrust beliefs and powers,
+The artless, ageless things you say
+Are fresh as May's own flowers. . . .
+
+I need not search too much to find
+Whose lot it was to send it,
+That feel upon me yet the kind,
+Soft hand of her who penned it;
+
+And see, through two-score years of smoke,
+In by-gone, quaint apparel,
+Shine from yon time-black Norway oak
+The face of Patience Caryl, -
+
+The pale, smooth forehead, silver-tressed;
+The gray gown, primly flowered;
+The spotless, stately coif whose crest
+Like Hector's horse-plume towered;
+
+And still the sweet half-solemn look
+Where some past thought was clinging,
+As when one shuts a serious book
+To hear the thrushes singing.
+
+I kneel to you!  Of those you were,
+Whose kind old hearts grow mellow, -
+Whose fair old faces grow more fair,
+As Point and Flanders yellow;
+
+Whom some old store of garnered grief,
+Their placid temples shading,
+Crowns like a wreath of autumn leaf
+With tender tints of fading.
+
+Peace to your soul!  You died unwed -
+Despite this loving letter.
+And what of John?  The less that's said
+Of John, I think, the better.
+
+Austin Dobson [1840-1921]
+
+
+THE NYMPH COMPLAINING FOR THE DEATH OF HER FAWN
+
+The wanton troopers riding by
+Have shot my fawn, and it will die.
+Ungentle men!  They cannot thrive
+Who killed thee.  Thou ne'er didst, alive,
+Them any harm; alas! nor could
+Thy death to them do any good.
+I'm sure I never wished them ill,
+Nor do I for all this; nor will:
+But, if my simple prayers may yet
+Prevail with Heaven to forget
+Thy murder, I will join my tears
+Rather than fail.  But O my fears!
+It cannot die so.  Heaven's King
+Keeps register of everything,
+And nothing may we use in vain;
+Even beasts must be with justice slain;
+Else men are made their deodands.
+Though they should wash their guilty hands
+In this warm life-blood, which doth part
+From thine, and wound me to the heart,
+Yet could they not be clean; their stain
+Is dyed in such a purple grain,
+There is not such another in
+The world to offer for their sin.
+
+Inconstant Sylvio, when yet
+I had not found him counterfeit,
+One morning, I remember well,
+Tied in this silver chain and bell,
+Gave it to me: nay, and I know
+What he said then - I'm sure I do.
+Said he, "Look how your huntsman here
+Hath taught a fawn to hunt his deer!"
+But Sylvio soon had me beguiled:
+This waxed tame, while he grew wild,
+And, quite regardless of my smart,
+Left me his fawn, but took his heart.
+
+Thenceforth I set myself to play
+My solitary time away
+With this; and very well content
+Could so mine idle life have spent;
+For it was full of sport, and light
+Of foot and heart, and did invite
+Me to its game: it seemed to bless
+Itself in me.  How could I less
+Than love it?  Oh, I cannot be
+Unkind to a beast that loveth me!
+
+Had it lived long, I do not know
+Whether it, too, might have done so
+As Sylvio did; his gifts might be
+Perhaps as false, or more, than he.
+But I am sure, for aught that I
+Could in so short a time espy,
+Thy love was far more better than
+The love of false and cruel man.
+
+With sweetest milk and sugar first
+I it at mine own fingers nursed;
+And as it grew, so every day,
+It waxed more white and sweet than they.
+It had so sweet a breath! and oft
+I blushed to see its foot more soft,
+And white, shall I say? than my hand -
+Nay, any lady's of the land!
+
+It was a wondrous thing how fleet
+'Twas on those little silver feet.
+With what a pretty skipping grace
+It oft would challenge me the race;
+And when't had left me far away,
+'Twould stay, and run again, and stay;
+For it was nimbler much than hinds,
+And trod as if on the four winds.
+
+I have a garden of my own,
+But so with roses overgrown,
+And lilies, that you would it guess
+To be a little wilderness;
+And all the spring-time of the year
+It loved only to be there.
+Among the beds of lilies I
+Have sought it oft, where it should lie,
+Yet could not, till itself would rise,
+Find it, although before mine eyes;
+For in the flaxen lilies' shade,
+It like a bank of lilies laid.
+Upon the roses it would feed,
+Until its lips e'en seemed to bleed;
+And then to me 'twould boldly trip,
+And print those roses on my lip.
+But all its chief delight was still
+On roses thus itself to fill;
+And its pure virgin lips to fold
+In whitest sheets of lilies cold.
+Had it lived long, it would have been
+Lilies without, roses within.
+
+O help!  O help! I see it faint
+And die as calmly as a saint!
+See how it weeps! the tears do come
+Sad, slowly, dropping like a gum.
+So weeps the wounded balsam; so
+The holy frankincense doth flow;
+The brotherless Heliades
+Melt in such amber tears as these.
+
+I in a golden vial will
+Keep these two crystal tears, and fill
+It, till it doth overflow, with mine,
+Then place it in Diana's shrine.
+
+Now my sweet fawn is vanished to
+Whither the swans and turtles go;
+In fair Elysium to endure
+With milk-white lambs and ermines pure.
+O, do not run too fast, for I
+Will but bespeak thy grave, and die.
+
+First my unhappy statue shall
+Be cut in marble; and withal
+Let it be weeping too; but there
+The engraver sure his art may spare;
+For I so truly thee bemoan
+That I shall weep though I be stone,
+Until my tears, still dropping, wear
+My breast, themselves engraving there;
+Then at my feet shalt thou be laid,
+Of purest alabaster made;
+For I would have thine image be
+White as I can, though not as thee.
+
+Andrew Marvell [1621-1678]
+
+
+ON THE DEATH OF A FAVORITE CAT, DROWNED IN A TUB OF GOLD FISHES
+
+'Twas on a lofty vase's side,
+Where China's gayest art had dyed
+The azure flowers that blow;
+Demurest of the tabby kind,
+The pensive Selima, reclined,
+Gazed on the lake below.
+
+Her conscious tail her joy declared;
+The fair round face, the snowy beard,
+The velvet of her paws,
+Her coat, that with the tortoise vies,
+Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes,
+She saw; and purred applause.
+
+Still had she gazed, but 'midst the tide
+Two angel forms were seen to glide,
+The Genii of the stream:
+Their scaly armor's Tyrian hue
+Through richest purple to the view
+Betrayed a golden gleam.
+
+The hapless Nymph with wonder saw:
+A whisker first and then a claw,
+With many an ardent wish,
+She stretched, in vain, to reach the prize.
+What female heart can gold despise?
+What Cat's averse to fish?
+
+Presumptous Maid! with looks intent
+Again she stretched, again she bent,
+Nor knew the gulf between.
+(Malignant Fate sat by, and smiled.)
+The slippery verge her feet beguiled,
+She tumbled headlong in.
+
+Eight times emerging from the flood
+She mewed to every watery god,
+Some speedy aid to send.
+No Dolphin came, no Nereid stirred:
+Nor cruel Tom nor Susan heard, -
+A Favorite has no friend!
+
+From hence, ye Beauties, undeceived,
+Know, one false step is ne'er retrieved,
+And be with caution bold.
+Not all that tempts your wandering eyes
+And heedless hearts, is lawful prize;
+Nor all that glisters, gold.
+
+Thomas Gray [1716-1771]
+
+
+VERSES ON A CAT
+
+Clubby! thou surely art, I ween,
+A Puss of most majestic mien,
+So stately all thy paces!
+With such a philosophic air
+Thou seek'st thy professorial chair,
+And so demure thy face is!
+
+And as thou sit'st, thine eye seems fraught
+With such intensity of thought
+That could we read it, knowledge
+Would seem to breathe in every mew,
+And learning yet undreamt by you
+Who dwell in Hall or College.
+
+Oh! when in solemn taciturnity
+Thy brain seems wandering through eternity,
+What happiness were mine
+Could I then catch the thoughts that flow,
+Thoughts such as ne'er were hatched below,
+But in a head like thine.
+
+Oh then, throughout the livelong day,
+With thee I'd sit and purr away
+In ecstasy sublime;
+And in thy face, as from a book,
+I'd drink in science at each look,
+Nor fear the lapse of time.
+
+Charles Daubeny [1745-1827]
+
+
+EPITAPH ON A HARE
+
+Here lies, whom hound did ne'er pursue,
+Nor swifter greyhound follow,
+Whose foot ne'er tainted morning dew,
+Nor ear heard huntsman's hallo;
+
+Old Tiney, surliest of his kind,
+Who, nursed with tender care,
+And to domestic bounds confined,
+Was still a wild Jack-hare.
+
+Though duly from my hand he took
+His pittance every night,
+He did it with a jealous look,
+And, when he could, would bite.
+
+His diet was of wheaten bread,
+And milk, and oats, and straw;
+Thistles, or lettuces instead,
+With sand to scour his maw.
+
+On twigs of hawthorn he regaled,
+On pippins' russet peel;
+And, when his juicy salads failed,
+Sliced carrot pleased him well.
+
+A Turkey carpet was his lawn,
+Whereon he loved to bound,
+To skip and gambol like a fawn,
+And swing his rump around.
+
+His frisking was at evening hours,
+For then he lost his fear;
+But most before approaching showers,
+Or when a storm drew near.
+
+Eight years and five round-rolling moons
+He thus saw steal away,
+Dozing out all his idle noons,
+And every night at play.
+
+I kept him for his humor's sake,
+For he would oft beguile
+My heart of thoughts that made it ache,
+And force me to a smile.
+
+But now, beneath this walnut-shade
+He finds his long, last home,
+And waits, in snug concealment laid,
+Till gentler Puss shall come.
+
+He, still more aged, feels the shocks
+From which no care can save,
+And, partner once of Tiney's box,
+Must soon partake his grave.
+
+William Cowper [1731-1800]
+
+
+ON THE DEATH OF MRS. THROCKMORTON'S BULLFINCH
+
+Ye Nymphs! if e'er your eyes were red
+With tears o'er hapless favorites shed,
+O share Maria's grief!
+Her favorite, even in his cage,
+(What will not hunger's cruel rage?)
+Assassined by a thief.
+
+Where Rhenus strays his vines among,
+The egg was laid from which he sprung,
+And though by nature mute,
+Or only with a whistle blessed,
+Well-taught, he all the sounds expressed
+Of flageolet or flute.
+
+The honors of his ebon poll
+Were brighter than the sleekest mole;
+His bosom of the hue
+With which Aurora decks the skies,
+When piping winds shall soon arise
+To sweep away the dew.
+
+Above, below, in all the house,
+Dire foe alike of bird and mouse,
+No cat had leave to dwell;
+And Bully's cage supported stood,
+On props of smoothest-shaven wood,
+Large-built and latticed well.
+
+Well-latticed, - but the grate, alas!
+Not rough with wire of steel or brass,
+For Bully's plumage sake,
+But smooth with wands from Ouse's side,
+With which, when neatly peeled and dried,
+The swains their baskets make.
+
+Night veiled the pole - all seemed secure -
+When, led by instinct sharp and sure,
+Subsistence to provide,
+A beast forth sallied on the scout,
+Long-backed, long-tailed, with whiskered snout,
+And badger-colored hide.
+
+He, entering at the study-door,
+Its ample area 'gan explore;
+And something in the wind
+Conjectured, sniffing round and round,
+Better than all the books he found,
+Food, chiefly, for the mind.
+
+Just then, by adverse fate impressed
+A dream disturbed poor Bully's rest;
+In sleep he seemed to view
+A rat, fast-clinging to the cage,
+And, screaming at the sad presage,
+Awoke and found it true.
+
+For, aided both by ear and scent,
+Right to his mark the monster went -
+Ah, Muse! forbear to speak
+Minute the horror that ensued;
+His teeth were strong, the cage was wood -
+He left poor Bully's beak.
+
+O had he made that too his prey!
+That beak, whence issued many a lay
+Of such mellifluous tone,
+Might have repaid him well, I wote,
+For silencing so sweet a throat,
+Fast stuck within his own.
+
+Maria weeps, - the Muses mourn; -
+So, when by Bacchanalians torn,
+On Thracian Hebrus' side
+The tree-enchanter Orpheus fell,
+His head alone remained to tell
+The cruel death he died.
+
+William Cowper [1731-1800]
+
+
+AN ELEGY ON A LAP-DOG
+
+Shock's fate I mourn; poor Shock is now no more:
+Ye Muses! mourn; ye Chambermaids! deplore.
+Unhappy Shock!  Yet more unhappy fair,
+Doomed to survive thy joy and only care.
+Thy wretched fingers now no more shall deck,
+And tie the favorite ribbon round his neck;
+No more thy hand shall smooth his glossy hair,
+And comb the wavings of his pendent ear.
+Let cease thy flowing grief, forsaken maid!
+All mortal pleasures in a moment fade:
+Our surest hope is in an hour destroyed,
+And love, best gift of Heaven, not long enjoyed.
+Methinks I see her frantic with despair,
+Her streaming eyes, wrung hands, and flowing hair;
+Her Mechlin pinners, rent, the floor bestrow,
+And her torn fan gives real signs of woe.
+Hence, Superstition! that tormenting guest,
+That haunts with fancied fears the coward breast;
+No dread events upon this fate attend,
+Stream eyes no more, no more thy tresses rend.
+Though certain omens oft forewarn a state,
+And dying lions show the monarch's fate,
+Why should such fears bid Celia's sorrow rise?
+For, when a lap-dog falls, no lover dies.
+Cease, Celia, cease; restrain thy flowing tears.
+Some warmer passion will dispel thy cares.
+In man you'll find a more substantial bliss,
+More grateful toying and a sweeter kiss.
+He's dead.  Oh! lay him gently in the ground!
+And may his tomb be by this verse renowned:
+Here Shock, the pride of all his kind, is laid,
+Who fawned like man, but ne'er like man betrayed.
+
+John Gay [1685-1732]
+
+
+MY LAST TERRIER
+
+I mourn "Patroclus," whilst I praise
+Young "Peter" sleek before the fire,
+A proper dog, whose decent ways
+Renew the virtues of his sire;
+"Patroclus" rests in grassy tomb,
+And "Peter" grows into his room.
+
+For though, when Time or Fates consign
+The terrier to his latest earth,
+Vowing no wastrel of the line
+Shall dim the memory of his worth,
+I meditate the silkier breeds,
+Yet still an Amurath succeeds:
+
+Succeeds to bind the heart again
+To watchful eye and strenuous paw,
+To tail that gratulates amain
+Or deprecates offended Law;
+To bind, and break, when failing eye
+And palsied paw must say good-bye.
+
+Ah, had the dog's appointed day
+But tallied with his master's span,
+Nor one swift decade turned to gray
+The busy muzzle's black and tan,
+To reprobate in idle men
+Their threescore empty years and ten!
+
+Sure, somewhere o'er the Stygian strait
+"Panurge" and "Bito," "Tramp" and "Mike,"
+In couchant conclave watch the gate,
+Till comes the last successive tyke,
+Acknowledged with the countersign:
+"Your master was a friend of mine."
+
+In dreams I see them spring to greet,
+With rapture more than tail can tell,
+Their master of the silent feet
+Who whistles o'er the asphodel,
+And through the dim Elysian bounds
+Leads all his cry of little hounds.
+
+John Halsham [18 -
+
+
+GEIST'S GRAVE
+
+Four years! - and didst thou stay above
+The ground, which hides thee now, but four?
+And all that life, and all that love,
+Were crowded, Geist! into no more?
+
+Only four years those winning ways,
+Which make me for thy presence yearn,
+Called us to pet thee or to praise,
+Dear little friend! at every turn?
+
+That loving heart, that patient soul,
+Had they indeed no longer span,
+To run their course, and reach their goal
+And read their homily to man?
+
+That liquid, melancholy eye,
+From whose pathetic, soul-fed springs
+Seemed surging the Virgilian cry,
+The sense of tears in mortal things -
+
+That steadfast, mournful strain, consoled
+By spirits gloriously gay,
+And temper of heroic mould -
+What, was four years their whole short day?
+
+Yes, only four! - and not the course
+Of all the centuries yet to come,
+And not the infinite resource
+Of Nature, with her countless sum
+
+Of figures, with her fulness vast
+Of new creation evermore,
+Can ever quite repeat the past,
+Or just thy little self restore.
+
+Stern law of every mortal lot!
+Which man, proud man, finds hard to bear,
+And builds himself I know not what
+Of second life I know not where.
+
+But thou, when struck thine hour to go,
+On us, who stood despondent by,
+A meek last glance of love didst throw,
+And humbly lay thee down to die.
+
+Yet would we keep thee in our heart -
+Would fix our favorite on the scene,
+Nor let thee utterly depart
+And be as if thou ne'er hadst been.
+
+And so there rise these lines of verse
+On lips that rarely form them now;
+While to each other we rehearse:
+Such ways, such arts, such looks hadst thou!
+
+We stroke thy broad brown paws again,
+We bid thee to thy vacant chair,
+We greet thee by the window-pane,
+We hear thy scuffle on the stair;
+
+We see the flaps of thy large ears
+Quick raised to ask which way we go;
+Crossing the frozen lake, appears
+Thy small black figure on the snow!
+
+Nor to us only art thou dear,
+Who mourn thee in thine English home;
+Thou hast thine absent master's tear,
+Dropped by the far Australian foam.
+
+Thy memory lasts both here and there,
+And thou shalt live as long as we.
+And after that - thou dost not care!
+In us was all the world to thee.
+
+Yet, fondly zealous for thy fame,
+Even to a date beyond our own,
+We strive to carry down thy name
+By mounded turf and graven stone.
+
+We lay thee, close within our reach,
+Here, where the grass is smooth and warm,
+Between the holly and the beech,
+Where oft we watched thy couchant form,
+
+Asleep, yet lending half an ear
+To travelers on the Portsmouth road; -
+There choose we thee, O guardian dear,
+Marked with a stone, thy last abode!
+
+Then some, who through this garden pass,
+When we too, like thyself, are clay,
+Shall see thy grave upon the grass,
+And stop before the stone, and say:
+
+People who lived here long ago
+Did by this stone, it seems, intend
+To name for future times to know
+The dachs-hound, Geist, their little friend.
+
+Matthew Arnold [1822-1888]
+
+
+"HOLD"
+
+I know, where Hampshire fronts the Wight,
+A little church, where "after strife"
+Reposes Guy de Blanquely, Knight,
+By Alison his wife:
+I know their features' graven lines
+In time-stained marble monotone,
+While crouched before their feet reclines
+Their little dog of stone!
+
+I look where Blanquely Castle still
+Frowns o'er the oak wood's summer state,
+(The maker of a patent pill
+Has purchased it of late),
+And then through Fancy's open door
+I backward turn to days of old,
+And see Sir Guy - a bachelor
+Who owns a dog called "Hold"!
+
+I see him take the tourney's chance,
+And urge his coal-black charger on
+To an arbitrament by lance
+For lovely Alison;
+I mark the onset, see him hurl
+From broidered saddle to the dirt
+His rival, that ignoble Earl -
+Black-hearted Massingbert!
+
+Then Alison, with down-dropped eyes,
+Where happy tears bedim the blue,
+Bestows a valuable prize
+And adds her hand thereto;
+My lord, his surcoat streaked with sand,
+Remounts, low muttering curses hot,
+And with a base-born, hireling band
+He plans a dastard plot!
+
+.   .   .   .   .   .   .
+
+'Tis night - Sir Guy has sunk to sleep,
+The castle keep is hushed and still -
+See, up the spiral stairway creep,
+To work his wicked will,
+Lord Massingbert of odious fame,
+Soft followed by his cut-throat staff;
+Ah, "Hold" has justified his name
+And pinned his lordship's calf!
+
+A growl, an oath, then torches flare;
+Out rings a sentry's startled shout;
+The guard are racing for the stair,
+Half-dressed, Sir Guy runs out;
+On high his glittering blade he waves,
+He gives foul Massingbert the point,
+He carves the hired assassin knaves
+Joint from plebeian joint!
+
+.   .   .   .   .   .   .
+
+The Knight is dead - his sword is rust,
+But in his day I'm certain "Hold"
+Wore, as his master's badge of trust,
+A collarette of gold:
+And still I like to fancy that,
+Somewhere beyond the Styx's bound,
+Sir Guy's tall phantom stoops to pat
+His little phantom hound!
+
+Patrick R. Chalmers [18-
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BARB OF SATIRE
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE VICAR OF BRAY
+
+In good King Charles's golden days,
+When loyalty no harm meant,
+A zealous high-churchman was I,
+And so I got preferment.
+To teach my flock I never missed:
+Kings were by God appointed,
+And lost are those that dare resist
+Or touch the Lord's anointed.
+And this is law that I'll maintain
+Until my dying day, sir,
+That whatsoever king shall reign,
+Still I'll be the Vicar of Bray, sir.
+
+When royal James possessed the crown,
+And popery grew in fashion,
+The penal laws I hooted down,
+And read the Declaration;
+The Church of Rome I found would fit
+Full well my constitution;
+And I had been a Jesuit
+But for the Revolution.
+
+When William was our king declared,
+To ease the nation's grievance,
+With this new wind about I steered,
+And swore to him allegiance;
+Old principles I did revoke,
+Set conscience at a distance;
+Passive obedience was a joke,
+A jest was non-resistance.
+
+When royal Anne became our queen,
+The Church of England's glory,
+Another face of things was seen,
+And I became a Tory;
+Occasional conformists base,
+I blamed their moderation,
+And thought the Church in danger was,
+By such prevarication.
+
+When George in pudding-time came o'er,
+And moderate men looked big, sir,
+My principles I changed once more,
+And so became a Whig, sir;
+And thus preferment I procured
+From our new Faith's defender,
+And almost every day abjured
+The Pope and the Pretender.
+
+The illustrious house of Hanover,
+And Protestant succession,
+To these I do allegiance swear -
+While they can keep possession:
+For in my faith and loyalty
+I nevermore will falter,
+And George my lawful king shall be -
+Until the times do alter.
+And this is law that I'll maintain
+Until my dying day, sir,
+That whatsoever king shall reign,
+Still I'll be the Vicar of Bray, sir.
+
+Unknown
+
+
+THE LOST LEADER
+[William Wordsworth]
+
+Just for a handful of silver he left us,
+Just for a ribbon to stick in his coat -
+Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
+Lost all the others she lets us devote;
+They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
+So much was theirs who so little allowed:
+How all our copper had gone for his service!
+Rags - were they purple, his heart had been proud -
+We that had loved him so, followed him, honored him,
+Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,
+Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,
+Made him our pattern to live and to die!
+Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,
+Burns, Shelley, were with us, - they watch from their graves!
+He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,
+- He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!
+We shall march prospering, - not through his presence;
+Songs may inspirit us, - not from his lyre;
+Deeds will be done, - while he boasts his quiescence,
+Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire:
+Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,
+One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,
+One more devil's-triumph and sorrow for angels,
+One wrong more to man, one more insult to God!
+Life's night begins: let him never come back to us!
+There would be doubt, hesitation and pain,
+Forced praise on our part - the glimmer of twilight,
+Never glad confident morning again!
+Best fight on well, for we taught him - strike gallantly,
+Menace our heart ere we master his own;
+Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us,
+Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne!
+
+Robert Browning [1812-1889]
+
+
+ICHABOD
+[Daniel Webster]
+
+So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn
+Which once he wore!
+The glory from his gray hairs gone
+Forevermore!
+
+Revile him not, the Tempter hath
+A snare for all;
+And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,
+Befit his fall!
+
+Oh, dumb be passion's stormy rage,
+When he who might
+Have lighted up and led his age,
+Falls back in night.
+
+Scorn! would the angels laugh, to mark
+A bright soul driven,
+Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark,
+From hope and heaven!
+
+Let not the land once proud of him
+Insult him now,
+Nor brand with deeper shame his dim,
+Dishonored brow.
+
+But let its humbled sons, instead,
+From sea to lake,
+A long lament, as for the dead,
+In sadness make.
+
+Of all we loved and honored, naught
+Save power remains;
+A fallen angel's pride of thought,
+Still strong in chains.
+
+All else is gone; from those great eyes
+The soul has fled:
+When faith is lost, when honor dies,
+The man is dead!
+
+Then, pay the reverence of old days
+To his dead fame;
+Walk backward, with averted gaze,
+And hide the shame!
+
+John Greenleaf Whittier [1807-1892]
+
+
+WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS
+
+Guvener B. is a sensible man;
+He stays to his home an' looks arter his folks;
+He draws his furrer ez straight ez he can,
+An' into nobody's tater-patch pokes;
+But John P.
+Robinson he
+Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.
+
+My! aint it terrible?  Wut shall we du?
+We can't never choose him o' course, - thet's flat;
+Guess we shall hev to come round, (don't you?)
+An' go in fer thunder an' guns, an' all that;
+Fer John P.
+Robinson he
+Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.
+
+Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man:
+He's ben on all sides that give places or pelf;
+But consistency still wuz a part of his plan, -
+He's ben true to one party, - an' thet is himself; -
+So John P.
+Robinson he
+Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C.
+
+Gineral C. he goes in fer the war;
+He don't vally princerple more'n an old cud;
+Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer,
+But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an' blood?
+So John P.
+Robinson he
+Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C.
+
+We were gittin' on nicely up here to our village,
+With good old idees o' wut's right an' wut aint,
+We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage,
+An' thet eppyletts worn't the best mark of a saint;
+But John P.
+Robinson he
+Sez this kind o' thing's an exploded idee.
+
+The side of our country must ollers be took,
+An' Presidunt Polk, you know, he is our country,
+An' the angel thet writes all our sins in a book
+Puts the debit to him, an' to us the per contry;
+An' John P.
+Robinson he
+Sez this is his view o' the thing to a T.
+
+Parson Wilbur he calls all these argimunts lies;
+Sez they're nothin' on airth but jest fee, faw, fum;
+An' thet all this big talk of our destinies
+Is half on it ign'ance, an' t'other half rum;
+But John P.
+Robinson he
+Sez it aint no sech thing; an', of course, so must we.
+
+Parson Wilbur sez he never heerd in his life
+That th' Apostles rigged out in their swaller-tail coats,
+An' marched round in front of a drum an' a fife,
+To git some on 'em office, an' some on 'em votes;
+But John P.
+Robinson he
+Sez they didn't know everythin' down in Judee.
+
+Wal, it's a marcy we've gut folks to tell us
+The rights an' the wrongs o' these matters, I vow, -
+God sends country lawyers, an' other wise fellers,
+To start the world's team wen it gits in a slough;
+Fer John P.
+Robinson he
+Sez the world'll go right, ef he hollers out Gee!
+
+James Russell Lowell [1819-1891]
+
+
+THE DEBATE IN THE SENNIT
+Sot To A Nursery Rhyme
+
+"Here we stan' on the Constitution, by thunder!
+It's a fact o' wich ther's bushils o' proofs;
+Fer how could we trample on 't so, I wonder,
+Ef't worn't thet it's ollers under our hoofs?"
+Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;
+"Human rights haint no more
+Right to come on this floor,
+No more'n the man in the moon," sez he.
+
+"The North haint no kind o' bisness with nothin',
+An' you've no idee how much bother it saves;
+We aint none riled by their frettin' an' frothin',
+We're used to layin' the string on our slaves,"
+Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; -
+Sez Mister Foote,
+"I should like to shoot
+The holl gang, by the gret horn spoon!" sez he.
+
+"Freedom's Keystone is Slavery, thet ther's no doubt on,
+It's sutthin' thet's - wha'd'ye call it? - divine, -
+An' the slaves thet we ollers make the most out on
+Air them north o' Mason an' Dixon's line,"
+Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; -
+"Fer all thet," sez Mangum,
+"'T would be better to hang 'em
+An' so git red on 'em soon," sez he.
+
+"The mass ough' to labor an' we lay on soffies,
+Thet's the reason I want to spread Freedom's aree;
+It puts all the cunninest on us in office,
+An' reelises our Maker's orig'nal idee,"
+Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; -
+"Thet's ez plain," sez Cass,
+"Ez thet some one's an ass,
+It's ez clear ez the sun is at noon," sez he.
+
+"Now don't go to say I'm the friend of oppression,
+But keep all your spare breath fer coolin' your broth,
+Fer I ollers hev strove (at least thet's my impression)
+To make cussed free with the rights o' the North,"
+Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; -
+"Yes," sez Davis o' Miss.,
+"The perfection o' bliss
+Is in skinnin' that same old coon," sez he.
+
+"Slavery's a thing thet depends on complexion,
+It's God's law thet fetters on black skins don't chafe;
+Ef brains wuz to settle it (horrid reflection!)
+Wich of our onnable body'd be safe?"
+Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; -
+Sez Mister Hannegan,
+Afore he began agin,
+"Thet exception is quite oppertoon," sez he.
+
+"Gen'nle Cass, Sir, you needn't be twitchin' your collar,
+Your merit's quite clear by the dut on your knees;
+At the North we don't make no distinctions o' color:
+You can all take a lick at our shoes wen you please,"
+Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; -
+Sez Mister Jarnagin,
+"They wun't hev to larn agin,
+They all on 'em know the old toon," sez he.
+
+"The slavery question aint no ways bewilderin',
+North an' South hev one int'rest, it's plain to a glance,
+No'thern men, like us patriarchs, don't sell their childrin,
+But they du sell themselves, ef they git a good chance,"
+Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; -
+Sez Atherton here,
+"This is gittin' severe,
+I wish I could dive like a loon," sez he.
+
+"It'll break up the Union, this talk about freedom,
+An' your fact'ry gals (soon ex we split) 'll make head,
+An' gittin' some Miss chief or other to lead 'em,
+'ll go to work raisin' permiscoous Ned,"
+Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; -
+"Yes, the North," sez Colquitt,
+"Ef we Southeners all quit,
+Would go down like a busted balloon," sez he.
+
+"Jest look wut is doin', wut annyky's brewin'
+In the beautiful clime o' the olive an' vine,
+All the wise aristoxy's atumblin' to ruin,
+An' the sankylot's drorin' an' drinkin' their wine,"
+Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; -
+"Yes," sez Johnson, "in France
+They're beginnin' to dance
+Beelzebub's own rigadoon," sez he.
+
+"The South's safe enough, it don't feel a mite skeery,
+Our slaves in their darkness an' dut air tu blest
+Not to welcome with proud hallylugers the ery
+Wen our eagle kicks yourn from the naytional nest,"
+Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; -
+"Oh," sez Westcott o' Florida,
+"Wut treason is horrider
+Than our priv'leges tryin' to proon?" sez he.
+
+"It's 'coz they're so happy, thet, wen crazy sarpints
+Stick their nose in our bizness, we git so darned riled;
+We think it's our dooty to give pooty sharp hints,
+Thet the last crumb of Edin on airth sha'n't be spiled,"
+Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; -
+"Ah," sez Dixon H. Lewis,
+"It perfectly true is
+Thet slavery's airth's grettest boon," sez he.
+
+James Russell Lowell [1819-1891]
+
+
+THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS
+A Song With A Stolen Burden
+
+Off with your hat! along the street
+His Lordship's carriage rolls;
+Respect to greatness - when it shines
+To cheer our darkened souls.
+Get off the step, you ragged boys!
+Policeman, where's your staff?
+This is a sight to check with awe
+The most irreverent laugh.
+Chapeau bas!
+Chapeau bas!
+Gloire au Marquis de Carabas!
+
+Stand further back! we'll see him well;
+Wait till they lift him out:
+It takes some time; his Lordship's old,
+And suffers from the gout.
+Now look! he owns a castled park
+For every finger thin;
+He has more sterling pounds a day
+Than wrinkles in his skin.
+
+The founder of his race was son
+To a king's cousin, rich;
+(The mother was an oyster wench -
+She perished in a ditch).
+His patriot worth embalmed has been
+In poets' loud applause:
+He made twelve thousand pounds a year
+By aiding France's cause.
+
+The second marquis, of the stole
+Was groom to the second James;
+He all but caught that recreant king
+When flying o'er the Thames.
+Devotion rare! by Orange Will
+With a Scotch county paid;
+He gained one more - in Ireland - when
+Charles Edward he betrayed.
+
+He lived to see his son grow up
+A general famed and bold,
+Who fought his country's fights - and one,
+For half a million, sold.
+His son (alas! the house's shame)
+Frittered the name away:
+Diced, wenched and drank - at last got shot,
+Through cheating in his play!
+
+Now, see, where, focused on one head,
+The race's glories shine:
+The head gets narrow at the top,
+But mark the jaw - how fine!
+Don't call it satyr-like; you'd wound
+Some scores, whose honest pates
+The self-same type present, upon
+The Carabas estates!
+
+Look at his skin - at four-score years
+How fresh it gleams and fair:
+He never tasted ill-dressed food,
+Or breathed in tainted air.
+The noble blood glows through his veins
+Still, with a healthful pink;
+His brow scarce wrinkled! - Brows keep so
+That have not got to think.
+
+His hand 's ungloved! - it shakes, 'tis true,
+But mark its tiny size, 
+(High birth's true sign) and shape, as on
+The lackey's arm it lies. 
+That hand ne'er penned a useful line,
+Ne'er worked a deed of fame,
+Save slaying one, whose sister he -
+Its owner - brought to shame.
+
+They ye got him in - he's gone to vote
+Your rights and mine away;
+Perchance our lives, should men be scarce,
+To fight his cause for pay. 
+We are his slaves! he owns our lands,
+Our woods, our seas, and skies;
+He'd have us shot like vicious dogs,
+Should we in murmuring rise!
+Chapeau bas!
+Chapeau bas!
+Gloire au Marquis de Carabas!
+
+Robert Brough [1828-1860]
+
+
+A MODEST WIT 
+
+A supercilious nabob of the East - 
+Haughty, being great - purse-proud, being rich -
+A governor, or general, at the least,
+I have forgotten which -
+
+Had in his family a humble youth,
+Who went from England in his patron's suit,
+An unassuming boy, in truth
+A lad of decent parts, and good repute.
+
+This youth had sense and spirit;
+But yet with all his sense,
+Excessive diffidence
+Obscured his merit.
+
+One day, at table, flushed with pride and wine,
+His Honor, proudly free, severely merry,
+Conceived it would be vastly fine
+To crack a joke upon his secretary.
+
+"Young man," he said, "by what art, craft, or trade,
+Did your good father gain a livelihood?" -
+"He was a saddler, sir," Modestus said,
+"And in his time was reckoned good."
+
+"A saddler, eh! and taught you Greek,
+Instead of teaching you to sew!
+Pray, why did not your father make
+A saddler, sir, of you?"
+
+Each parasite, then, as in duty bound,
+The joke applauded, and the laugh went round.
+At length Modestus, bowing low,
+Said (craving pardon, if too free he made),
+"Sir, by your leave, I fain would know
+Your father's trade!"
+
+"My father's trade! by heaven, that's too bad!
+My father's trade?  Why, blockhead, are you mad?
+My father, sir, did never stoop so low -
+He was a gentleman, I'd have you know."
+
+"Excuse the liberty I take,"
+Modestus said, with archness on his brow,
+"Pray, why did not your father make
+A gentleman of you?"
+
+Selleck Osborn [1783-1826]
+
+
+JOLLY JACK
+
+When fierce political debate
+Throughout the isle was storming,
+And Rads attacked the throne and state,
+And Tories the reforming,
+To calm the furious rage of each,
+And right the land demented,
+Heaven sent us Jolly Jack, to teach
+The way to be contented.
+
+Jack's bed was straw, 'twas warm and soft,
+His chair, a three-legged stool;
+His broken jug was emptied oft,
+Yet, somehow, always full.
+His mistress' portrait decked the wall,
+His mirror had a crack,
+Yet, gay and glad, though this was all
+His wealth, lived Jolly Jack.
+
+To give advice to avarice,
+Teach pride its mean condition,
+And preach good sense to dull pretence,
+Was honest Jack's high mission.
+Our simple statesman found his rule
+Of moral in the flagon,
+And held his philosophic school
+Beneath the "George and Dragon"
+
+When village Solons cursed the Lords,
+And called the malt-tax sinful,
+Jack heeded not their angry words,
+But smiled and drank his skinful.
+And when men wasted health and life,
+In search of rank and riches,
+Jack marched aloof the paltry strife,
+And wore his threadbare breeches.
+
+"I enter not the Church," he said,
+"But I'll not seek to rob it;"
+So worthy Jack Joe Miller read,
+While others studied Cobbett.
+His talk it was of feast and fun;
+His guide the Almanack;
+From youth to age thus gaily run
+The life of Jolly Jack.
+
+And when Jack prayed, as oft he would,
+He humbly thanked his Maker;
+"I am," said he, "O Father good!
+Nor Catholic nor Quaker:
+Give each his creed, let each proclaim
+His catalogue of curses;
+I trust in Thee, and not in them,
+In Thee, and in Thy mercies!
+
+"Forgive me if, midst all Thy works,
+No hint I see of damning;
+And think there's faith among the Turks,
+And hope for e'en the Brahmin.
+Harmless my mind is, and my mirth,
+And kindly is my laughter; 
+I cannot see the smiling earth, 
+And think there's hell hereafter."
+
+Jack died; he left no legacy,
+Save that his story teaches: -
+Content to peevish poverty;
+Humility to riches.
+Ye scornful great, ye envious small,
+Come fellow in his track;
+We all were happier, if we all
+Would copy Jolly Jack.
+
+William Makepeace Thackeray [1811-1863]
+
+
+THE KING OF BRENTFORD
+After Beranger
+
+There was a King in Brentford, - of whom no legends tell,
+But who, without his glory, - could eat and sleep right well.
+His Polly's cotton nightcap - it was his crown of state,
+He slept of evenings early, - and rose of mornings late.
+
+All in a fine mud palace, - each day he took four meals,
+And for a guard of honor, - a dog ran at his heels.
+Sometimes to view his kingdoms, - rode forth this monarch good,
+And then a prancing jackass - he royally bestrode.
+
+There were no costly habits - with which this King was cursed,
+Except (and where's the harm on't) - a somewhat lively thirst;
+But people must pay taxes, - and Kings must have their sport;
+So out of every gallon - His Grace he took a quart.
+
+He pleased the ladies round him, - with manners soft and bland;
+With reason good, they named him, - the father of his land.
+Each year his mighty armies - marched forth in gallant show;
+Their enemies were targets, - their bullets they were tow.
+
+He vexed no quiet neighbor, - no useless conquest made,
+But by the laws of pleasure, - his peaceful realm he swayed.
+And in the years he reigned, - through all this country wide,
+There was no cause for weeping, - save when the good man died.
+
+The faithful men of Brentford, - do still their King deplore,
+His portrait yet is swinging, - beside an alehouse door.
+And topers, tender-hearted, - regard his honest phiz,
+And envy times departed, - that knew a reign like his.
+
+William Makepeace Thackeray [1811-1863]
+
+
+KAISER & CO
+
+Der Kaiser auf der Vaterland
+Und Gott on high, all dings gommand;
+Ve two, ach don'd you understandt?
+Meinself - und Gott.
+
+He reigns in heafen, und always shall, 
+Und mein own embire don'd vas shmall;
+Ein noble bair, I dink you call
+Meinself - und Gott.
+
+Vile some mens sing der power divine,
+Mein soldiers sing der "Wacht am Rhein,"
+Und drink der healt in Rhenish wein
+Auf me - und Gott.
+
+Dere's France dot swaggers all aroundt,
+She's ausgespieldt - she's no aggoundt;
+To mooch ve dinks she don'd amoundt,
+Meinself - und Gott.
+
+She vill not dare to fight again,
+But if she shouldt, I'll show her blain
+Dot Elsass und (in French) Lorraine
+Are mein - und Gott's.
+
+Dere's grandma dinks she's nicht shmall beer,
+Mit Boers und dings she interfere;
+She'll learn none runs dis hemisphere
+But me - und Gott.
+
+She dinks, goot frau, some ships she's got,
+Und soldiers mit der sgarlet goat;
+Ach! ve could knock dem - pouf! like dot,
+Meinself - und Gott.
+
+In dimes auf peace, brebared for wars,
+I bear der helm und sbear auf Mars,
+Und care nicht for den dousant czars,
+Meinself - und Gott.
+
+In short, I humor efery whim,
+Mit aspect dark und visage grim,
+Gott pulls mit me und I mit Him -
+Meinself - und Gott.
+
+Alexander Macgregor Rose [1846-1898]
+
+
+NONGTONGPAW
+
+John Bull for pastime took a prance,
+Some time ago, to peep at France;
+To talk of sciences and arts,
+And knowledge gained in foreign parts.
+Monsieur, obsequious, heard him speak,
+And answered John in heathen Greek;
+To all he asked, 'bout all he saw,
+'Twas, "Monsieur, je vous n'entends pas."
+
+John, to the Palais-Royal come,
+Its splendor almost struck him dumb.
+"I say, whose house is that there here?"
+"House!  Je vous n'entends pas, Monsieur."
+"What, Nongtongpaw again!" cries John;
+"This fellow is some mighty Don:
+No doubt he's plenty for the maw, -
+I'll breakfast with this Nongtongpaw."
+
+John saw Versailles from Marli's height,
+And cried, astonished at the sight,
+"Whose fine estate is that there here?"
+"State!  Je vous n'entends pas, Monsieur."
+"His? what, the land and houses too?
+The fellow's richer than a Jew:
+On everything he lays his claw!
+I should like to dine with Nongtongpaw."
+
+Next tripping came a courtly fair,
+John cried, enchanted with her air,
+"What lovely wench is that there here?"
+"Ventch!  Je vous n'entends pas, Monsieur."
+"What, he again?  Upon my life!
+A palace, lands, and then a wife
+Sir Joshua might delight to draw:
+I should like to sup with Nongtongpaw.
+
+"But hold! whose funeral's that?" cries John.
+"Je vous n'entends pas." - "What, is he gone?
+Wealth, fame, and beauty could not save
+Poor Nongtongpaw, then, from the grave!
+His race is run, his game is up, -
+I'd with him breakfast, dine, and sup;
+But since he chooses to withdraw,
+Good night t' ye, Mounseer Nongtongpaw!"
+
+Charles Dibdin [1745-1814]
+
+
+THE LION AND THE CUB
+
+How fond are men of rule and place,
+Who court it from the mean and base!
+These cannot bear an equal nigh,
+But from superior merit fly.
+They love the cellar's vulgar joke,
+And lose their hours in ale and smoke.
+There o'er some petty club preside;
+So poor, so paltry, is their pride!
+Nay, even with fools whole nights will sit,
+In hopes to be supreme in wit.
+If these can read, to these I write,
+To set their worth in truest light.
+
+A Lion-cub of sordid mind,
+Avoided all the lion kind;
+Fond of applause, he sought the feasts
+Of vulgar and ignoble beasts;
+With asses all his time he spent,
+Their club's perpetual president.
+He caught their manners, looks, and airs;
+An ass in everything but ears!
+If e'er his Highness meant a joke,
+They grinned applause before he spoke;
+But at each word what shouts of praise!
+"Good gods! how natural he brays!"
+Elate with flattery and conceit,
+He seeks his royal sire's retreat;
+Forward, and fond to show his parts,
+His Highness brays; the Lion starts.
+"Puppy! that cursed vociferation
+Betrays thy life and conversation:
+Coxcombs, an ever-noisy race,
+Are trumpets of their own disgrace."
+"Why so severe?" the Cub replies;
+"Our senate always held me wise!"
+"How weak is pride," returns the sire:
+"All fools are vain when fools admire!
+But know, what stupid asses prize,
+Lions and noble beasts despise."
+
+John Gay [1685-1732]
+
+
+THE HARE WITH MANY FRIENDS
+
+Friendship, like love, is but a name,
+Unless to one you stint the flame.
+The child, whom many fathers share,
+Hath seldom known a father's care.
+'Tis thus in friendship; who depend
+On many, rarely find a friend.
+A Hare, who, in a civil way,
+Complied with everything, like Gay,
+Was known by all the bestial train,
+Who haunt the wood, or graze the plain;
+Her care was never to offend,
+And every creature was her friend.
+As forth she went at early dawn,
+To taste the dew-besprinkled lawn,
+Behind she hears the hunter's cries,
+And from the deep-mouthed thunder flies:
+She starts, she stops, she pants for breath;
+She hears the near advance of death;
+She doubles, to mislead the hound,
+And measures back her mazy round:
+Till, fainting in the public way,
+Half dead with fear she gasping lay.
+What transport in her bosom grew,
+When first the Horse appeared in view!
+"Let me," says she, "your back ascend,
+And owe my safety to a friend.
+You know my feet betray my flight:
+To friendship every burden's light."
+The Horse replied: "Poor honest Puss,
+It grieves my heart to see thee thus;
+Be comforted; relief is near,
+For all your friends are in the rear."
+She next the stately Bull implored;
+And thus replied the mighty lord:
+"Since every beast alive can tell
+That I sincerely wish you well,
+I may, without offence, pretend,
+To take the freedom of a friend.
+Love calls me hence; a favorite cow
+Expects me near yon barley-mow;
+And when a lady's in the case,
+You know, all other things give place.
+To leave you thus might seem unkind;
+But see, the Goat is just behind."
+The Goat remarked her pulse was high,
+Her languid head, her heavy eye;
+"My back," says he, "may do you harm;
+The Sheep's at hand, and wool is warm."
+The Sheep was feeble, and complained
+His sides a load of wool sustained:
+Said he was slow, confessed his fears,
+For hounds eat sheep as well as Hares.
+She now the trotting Calf addressed,
+To save from death a friend distressed.
+"Shall I," says he, "of tender age,
+In this important care engage?
+Older and abler passed you by;
+How strong are those, how weak am I!
+Should I presume to bear you hence,
+Those friends of mine may take offence.
+Excuse me, then.  You know my heart;
+But dearest friends, alas! must part.
+How shall we all lament!  Adieu!
+For see, the hounds are just in view."
+
+John Gay [1685-1732]
+
+
+THE SYCOPHANTIC FOX AND THE GULLIBLE RAVEN
+
+A raven sat upon a tree,
+And not a word he spoke, for
+His beak contained a piece of Brie,
+Or, maybe, it was Roquefort?
+We'll make it any kind you please -
+At all events, it was a cheese.
+
+Beneath the tree's umbrageous limb
+A hungry fox sat smiling;
+He saw the raven watching him,
+And spoke in words beguiling:
+"J'admire," said he, "ton beau plumage,"
+(The which was simply persiflage).
+
+Two things there are, no doubt you know,
+To which a fox is used, -
+A rooster that is bound to crow,
+A crow that's bound to roost,
+And whichsoever he espies
+He tells the most unblushing lies.
+
+"Sweet fowl," he said, "I understand
+You're more than merely natty:
+I hear you sing to beat the band
+And Adelina Patti.
+Pray render with your liquid tongue
+A bit from 'Gotterdammerung.'"
+
+This subtle speech was aimed to please
+The crow, and it succeeded:
+He thought no bird in all the trees
+Could sing as well as he did.
+In flattery completely doused,
+He gave the "Jewel Song" from "Faust."
+
+But gravitation's law, of course,
+As Isaac Newton showed it,
+Exerted on the cheese its force,
+And elsewhere soon bestowed it.
+In fact, there is no need to tell
+What happened when to earth it fell.
+
+I blush to add that when the bird
+Took in the situation,
+He said one brief, emphatic word,
+Unfit for publication.
+The fox was greatly startled, but
+He only sighed and answered "Tut!"
+
+The moral is: A fox is bound
+To be a shameless sinner.
+And also: When the cheese comes round
+You know it's after dinner.
+But (what is only known to few)
+The fox is after dinner, too.
+
+Guy Wetmore Carryl [1873-1904]
+
+
+THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY AND THE KNIFE-GRINDER
+Friend Of Humanity
+
+Needy knife-grinder! whither are you going?
+Rough is the road; your wheel is out of order. -
+Bleak blows the blast; - your hat has got a hole in't.
+So have your breeches!
+
+Weary knife-grinder! little think the proud ones
+Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike-
+Road, what hard work 'tis crying all day,
+"Knives and
+Scissors to grind O!"
+
+Tell me, knife-grinder, how you came to grind knives?
+Did some rich man tyrannically use you?
+Was it the squire? or parson of the parish?
+Or the attorney?
+
+Was it the squire for killing of his game? or
+Covetous parson, for his tithes destraining?
+Or roguish lawyer made you lose your little
+All in a lawsuit?
+
+(Have you not read the Rights of Man, by Tom Paine?)
+Drops of compassion tremble on my eyelids,
+Ready to fall, as soon as you have told your
+Pitiful story.
+
+KNIFE-GRINDER
+Story? God bless you! I have none to tell, sir;
+Only, last night, a-drinking at the Chequers,
+This poor old hat and breeches, as you see, were
+Torn in a scuffle
+
+Constables came up for to take me into
+Custody; they took me before the justice;
+Justice Oldmixon put me in the parish
+Stocks for a vagrant.
+
+I should be glad to drink your honor's health in
+A pot of beer, if you will give me sixpence;
+But for my part, I never love to meddle
+With politics, sir.
+
+FRIEND OF HUMANITY
+I give thee sixpence!  I will see thee damned first, -
+Wretch! whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance! -
+Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded,
+Spiritless outcast!
+
+(Kicks the Knife-grinder, overturns his wheel, and exit in a transport of republican enthusiasm and universal philanthropy.)
+
+George Canning [1770-1827]
+
+
+VILLON'S STRAIGHT TIP TO ALL CROSS COVES
+"Tout aux tavernes et aux fiells."
+
+Suppose you screeve? or go cheap-jack?
+Or fake the broads? or fig a nag?
+Or thimble-rig? or knap a yack?
+Or pitch a snide? or smash a rag?
+Suppose you duff? or nose and lag?
+Or get the straight, and land your pot?
+How do you melt the multy swag?
+Booze and the blowens cop the lot.
+
+Fiddle, or fence, or mace, or mack;
+Or moskeneer, or flash the drag;
+Dead-lurk a crib, or do a crack;
+Pad with a slang, or chuck a fag;
+Bonnet, or tout, or mump and gag;
+Rattle the tats, or mark the spot;
+You can not bag a single stag;
+Booze and the blowens cop the lot.
+
+Suppose you try a different tack,
+And on the square you flash your flag?
+At penny-a-lining make your whack,
+Or with the mummers mug and gag?
+For nix, for nix the dibbs you bag!
+At any graft, no matter what,
+Your merry goblins soon stravag:
+Booze and the blowens cop the lot.
+
+THE MORAL
+It's up the spout and Charley Wag
+With wipes and tickers and what not,
+Until the squeezer nips your scrag,
+Booze and the blowens cop the lot.
+
+William Ernest Henley [1849-1903]
+
+
+VILLON'S BALLADE
+Of Good Counsel, To His Friends Of Evil Life
+
+Nay, be you pardoner or cheat,
+Or cogger keen, or mumper shy,
+You'll burn your fingers at the feat,
+And howl like other folks that fry.
+All evil folks that love a lie!
+And where goes gain that greed amasses,
+By wile, and guile, and thievery?
+'Tis all to taverns and to lasses!
+
+Rhyme, rail, dance, play the cymbals sweet,
+With game, and shame, and jollity,
+Go jigging through the field and street,
+With myst'ry and morality;
+Win gold at gleek, - and that will fly,
+Where all your gain at passage passes, -
+And that's?  You know as well as I,
+'Tis all to taverns and to lasses!
+
+Nay, forth from all such filth retreat,
+Go delve and ditch, in wet or dry,
+Turn groom, give horse and mule their meat,
+If you've no clerkly skill to ply;
+You'll gain enough, with husbandry,
+But - sow hempseed and such wild grasses,
+And where goes all you take thereby? -
+'Tis all to taverns and to lasses!
+
+ENVOY
+Your clothes, your hose, your broidery,
+Your linen that the snow surpasses,
+Or ere they're worn, off, off they fly,
+'Tis all to taverns and to lasses!
+
+Andrew Lang [1844-1912]
+
+
+A LITTLE BROTHER OF THE RICH
+
+To put new shingles on old roofs;
+To give old women wadded skirts;
+To treat premonitory coughs
+With seasonable flannel shirts;
+To soothe the stings of poverty
+And keep the jackal from the door, -
+These are the works that occupy
+The Little Sister of the Poor.
+
+She carries, everywhere she goes,
+Kind words and chickens, jams and coals;
+Poultices for corporeal woes,
+And sympathy for downcast souls:
+Her currant jelly, her quinine,
+The lips of fever move to bless;
+She makes the humble sick-room shine
+With unaccustomed tidiness.
+
+A heart of hers the instant twin
+And vivid counterpart is mine;
+I also serve my fellow-men,
+Though in a somewhat different line.
+The Poor, and their concerns, she has
+Monopolized, because of which
+It falls to me to labor as
+A Little Brother of the Rich.
+
+For their sake at no sacrifice
+Does my devoted spirit quail;
+I give their horses exercise;
+As ballast on their yachts I sail.
+Upon their tallyhos I ride
+And brave the chances of a storm;
+I even use my own inside
+To keep their wines and victuals warm.
+
+Those whom we strive to benefit
+Dear to our hearts soon grow to be;
+I love my Rich, and I admit
+That they are very good to me.
+Succor the Poor, my sisters, - I,
+While heaven shall still vouchsafe me health,
+Will strive to share and mollify
+The trials of abounding wealth.
+
+Edward Sandford Martin [1856-
+
+
+THE WORLD'S WAY
+
+At Haroun's court it chanced, upon a time,
+An Arab poet made this pleasant rhyme:
+
+"The new moon is a horseshoe, wrought of God,
+Wherewith the Sultan's stallion shall be shod."
+
+On hearing this, the Sultan smiled, and gave
+The man a gold-piece.  Sing again, O slave!
+
+Above his lute the happy singer bent,
+And turned another gracious compliment.
+
+And, as before, the smiling Sultan gave
+The man a sekkah.  Sing again, O slave!
+
+Again the verse came, fluent as a rill
+That wanders, silver-footed, down a hill.
+
+The Sultan, listening, nodded as before,
+Still gave the gold, and still demanded more.
+
+The nimble fancy that had climbed so high
+Grew weary with its climbing by and by:
+
+Strange discords rose; the sense went quite amiss;
+The singer's rhymes refused to meet and kiss:
+
+Invention flagged, the lute had got unstrung,
+And twice he sang the song already sung.
+
+The Sultan, furious, called a mute, and said,
+O Musta, straightway whip me off his head!
+
+Poets! not in Arabia alone
+You get beheaded when your skill is gone.
+
+Thomas Bailey Aldrich [1837-1907]
+
+
+FOR MY OWN MONUMENT
+
+As doctors give physic by way of prevention,
+Mat, alive and in health, of his tombstone took care;
+For delays are unsafe, and his pious intention
+May haply be never fulfilled by his heir.
+
+Then take Mat's word for it, the sculptor is paid;
+That the figure is fine, pray believe your own eye;
+Yet credit but lightly what more may be said,
+For we flatter ourselves, and teach marble to lie.
+
+Yet counting as far as to fifty his years,
+His virtues and vices were as other men's are;
+High hopes he conceived, and he smothered great fears,
+In a life parti-colored, half pleasure, half care.
+
+Nor to business a drudge, nor to faction a slave,
+He strove to make interest and freedom agree;
+In public employments industrious and grave,
+And alone with his friends, lord! how merry was he!
+
+Now in equipage stately, now humbly on foot,
+Both fortunes be tried, but to neither would trust;
+And whirled in the round, as the wheel turned about,
+He found riches had wings, and knew man was but dust.
+
+This verse, little polished, though mighty sincere,
+Sets neither his titles nor merit to view;
+It says that his relics collected lie here,
+And no mortal yet knows too if this may be true.
+
+Fierce robbers there are that infest the highway,
+So Mat may be killed, and his bones never found;
+False witness at court, and fierce tempests at sea,
+So Mat may yet chance to be hanged or be drowned.
+
+If his bones lie in earth, roll in sea, fly in air,
+To Fate we must yield, and the thing is the same;
+And if passing thou giv'st him a smile or a tear,
+He cares not - yet, prithee, be kind to his fame.
+
+Matthew Prior [1664-1721]
+
+
+THE BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB AT SAINT PRAXED'S CHURCH
+
+Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!
+Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back?
+Nephews - sons mine . . ah God, I know not!  Well -
+She, men would have to be your mother once,
+Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was!
+What's done is done, and she is dead beside,
+Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since,
+And as she died so must we die ourselves,
+And thence ye may perceive the world's a dream.
+Life, how and what is it?  As here I lie
+In this state-chamber, dying by degrees,
+Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask
+"Do I live, am I dead?"  Peace, peace seems all.
+Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace;
+And so, about this tomb of mine.  I fought
+With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know:
+- Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care;
+Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner South
+He graced his carrion with, God curse the same!
+Yet still my niche is not so cramped, but thence
+One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side,
+And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats,
+And up into the aery dome where live
+The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk:
+And I shall fill my slab of basalt there,
+And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest,
+With those nine columns round me, two and two,
+The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands:
+Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe
+As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse.
+- Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone,
+Put me where I may look at him!  True peach,
+Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize!
+Draw close: that conflagration of my church
+- What then?  So much was saved if aught were missed!
+My sons, ye would not be my death?  Go dig
+The white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood,
+Drop water gently till the surface sink,
+And if ye-find. . . Ah God, I know not, I! . . .
+Bedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft,
+And corded up in a tight olive-frail,
+Some lump, ah God, of lapis lazuli,
+Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape,
+Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast. . .
+Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all,
+That brave Frascati villa with its bath,
+So, let the blue lump poise between my knees,
+Like God the Father's globe on both his hands
+Ye worship in the Jesu Church so gay,
+For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst!
+Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years:
+Man goeth to the grave, and where is he?
+Did I say basalt for my slab, sons?  Black -
+'T was ever antique-black I meant!  How else
+Shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath? -
+The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me,
+Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance
+Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so,
+The Saviour at his sermon on the mount,
+Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan
+Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off,
+And Moses with the tables . . . but I know
+Ye mark me not!  What do they whisper thee,
+Child of my bowels, Anselm?  Ah, ye hope
+To revel down my villas while I gasp
+Bricked o'er with beggar's mouldy travertine
+Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at!
+Nay, boys, ye love me - all of jasper, then!
+'T is jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve
+My bath must needs be left behind, alas!
+One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut,
+There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world -
+And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray
+Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts,
+And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs?
+- That's if ye carve my epitaph aright,
+Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word,
+No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line -
+Tully, my masters?  Ulpian serves his need!
+And then how I shall lie through centuries,
+And hear the blessed mutter of the mass,
+And see God made and eaten all day long,
+And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste
+Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!
+For as I lie here, hours of the dead night,
+Dying in state and by such slow degrees,
+I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook,
+And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point,
+And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, drop
+Into great laps and folds of sculptor's-work:
+And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts
+Grow, with a certain humming in my ears,
+About the life before I lived this life,
+And this life too, popes, cardinals and priests,
+Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount,
+Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes,
+And new-found agate urns as fresh as day, 
+And marble's language, Latin pure, discreet,
+- Aha, ELUCESCEBAT quoth our friend? - 
+No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best!
+Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage.
+All lapis, all, sons!  Else I give the Pope
+My villas!  Will ye ever eat my heart?
+Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick,
+They glitter like your mother's for my soul,
+Or ye would heighten my impoverished frieze,
+Piece out its starved design, and fill my vase
+With grapes, and add a visor and a Term,
+And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx
+That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down,
+To comfort me on my entablature
+Whereon I am to lie till I must ask
+"Do I live, am I dead?"  There, leave me, there!
+For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude
+To death - ye wish it - God, ye wish it!  Stone -
+Gritstone, a-crumble!  Clammy squares which sweat
+As if the corpse they keep were oozing through -
+And no more lapis to delight the world!
+Well, go!  I bless ye.  Fewer tapers there,
+But in a row: and, going, turn your backs
+- Ay, like departing altar-ministrants, 
+And leave me in my church, the church for peace,
+That I may watch at leisure if he leers -
+Old Gandolf - at me, from his onion-stone,
+As still he envied me, so fair she was!
+
+Robert Browning [1812-1889]
+
+
+UP AT A VILLA - DOWN IN THE CITY
+As Distinguished By An Italian Person Of Quality
+
+Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
+The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square.
+Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!
+Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least!
+There, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect feast;
+While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a beast.
+
+Well now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull
+Just on a mountain-edge as bare as the creature's skull,
+Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull!
+- I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair's turned wool.
+
+But the city, oh the city - the square with the houses!  Why?
+They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there's something to take the eye!
+Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry!
+You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by;
+Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets high;
+And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly.
+
+What of a villa?  Though winter be over in March by rights,
+'Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the heights:
+You've the brown ploughed land before, where the oxen steam and wheeze, 
+And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint gray olive trees.
+
+Is it better in May, I ask you?  You've summer all at once;
+In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suns.
+'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well,
+The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell, 
+Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick and sell.
+
+Is it ever hot in the square?  There's a fountain to spout and splash!
+In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such foam-bows flash
+On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and paddle and pash
+Round the lady atop in the conch - fifty gazers do not abash,
+Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a sort of sash.
+
+All the year round at the villa, nothing's to see though you linger,
+Except yon cypress that points like Death's lean lifted fore finger.
+Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix in the corn and mingle,
+Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem a-tingle.
+Late August or early September, the stunning cicala is shrill
+And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the resinous firs
+  on the hill.
+Enough of the seasons, - I spare you the months of the fever and chill.
+
+Ere you open your eyes in the city, the blessed church-bells begin:
+No sooner the bells leave off, than the diligence rattles in:
+You get the pick of the news, and it costs you never a pin.
+By and by there's the travelling doctor gives pills, lets blood,
+  draws teeth;
+Or the Pulcinello-trumpet breaks up the market beneath.
+At the post-office such a scene-picture - the new play, piping hot!
+And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal thieves were shot. 
+Above it, behold the Archbishop's most fatherly of rebukes,
+And beneath, with his crown and his lion, some little new law
+  of the Duke's!
+Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Reverend Don So-and-so,
+Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, St. Jerome, and Cicero,
+"And moreover," (the sonnet goes rhyming), "the skirts of
+  St. Paul has reached,
+Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more unctuous than
+  ever he preached."
+Noon strikes, - here sweeps the procession! our Lady borne 
+  smiling and smart
+With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart! 
+Bang-whang-whang, goes the drum, tootle-k-tootle the fife;
+No keeping one's haunches still: it's the greatest pleasure in life.
+
+But bless you, it's dear - it's dear! fowls, wine, at double the rate.
+They have clapped a new tax upon salt, and what oil pays passing the gate
+It's a horror to think of.  And so, the villa for me, not the city!
+Beggars can scarcely be choosers: but still - ah, the pity, the pity!
+Look, two and two go the priests, then the monks with cowls and sandals,
+And the penitents dressed in white skirts, a-holding the yellow candles;
+One, he carries a flag up straight, and another a cross with handles,
+And the Duke's guard brings up the rear, for the better prevention
+  of scandals.
+Bang-whang-whang, goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife.
+Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!
+
+Robert Browning [1812-1889]
+
+
+ALL SAINTS'
+
+In a church which is furnished with mullion and gable,
+With altar and reredos, with gargoyle and groin,
+The penitents' dresses are sealskin and sable,
+The odor of sanctity's eau-de-cologne.
+
+But only could Lucifer, flying from Hades,
+Gaze down on this crowd with its paniers and paints,
+He would say, as he looked at the lords and the ladies,
+"Oh, where is All Sinners' if this is All Saints'?"
+
+Edmund Yates [1831-1894]
+
+
+AN ADDRESS TO THE UNCO GUID, OR THE RIGIDLY RIGHTEOUS
+
+My son, these maxims make a rule,
+And lump them aye thegither:
+The Rigid Righteous is a fool
+The Rigid Wise anither:
+The cleanest corn that e'er was dight
+May hae some pyles o' caff in;
+Sae ne'er a fellow-creature slight
+For random fits o' daffin. 
+ Solomon - Eccles. vii. 16.
+
+Oh ye wha are sae guid yoursel',
+Sae pious and sae holy, 
+Ye've naught to do but mark and tell
+Your neebor's fauts and folly: -
+Whase life is like a weel-gaun mill,
+Supplied wi' store o' water,
+The heaped happer's ebbing still,
+And still the clap plays clatter.
+
+Hear me, ye venerable core,
+As counsel for poor mortals
+That frequent pass douce Wisdom's door,
+For glaikit Folly's portals! 
+I, for their thoughtless, careless sakes,
+Would here propone defences,
+Their donsie tricks, their black mistakes,
+Their failings and mischances.
+
+Ye see your state wi' theirs compared,
+And shudder at the niffer;
+But cast a moment's fair regard,
+What maks the mighty differ?
+Discount what scant occasion gave
+That purity ye pride in,
+And (what's aft mair than a' the lave)
+Your better art o' hidin'.
+
+Think, when your castigated pulse
+Gies now and then a wallop,
+What ragings must his veins convulse,
+That still eternal gallop:
+Wi' wind and tide fair i' your tail,
+Right on ye scud your sea-way; -
+But in the teeth o' baith to sail,
+It makes an unco lee-way.
+
+See Social Life and Glee sit down,
+All joyous and unthinking,
+Till, quite transmugrified, they've grown
+Debauchery and Drinking:
+Oh, would they stay to calculate
+The eternal consequences;
+Or your more dreaded hell to state,
+Damnation of expenses!
+
+Ye high, exalted, virtuous dames,
+Tied up in godly laces,
+Before ye gie poor Frailty names,
+Suppose a change o' cases;
+A dear-loved lad, convenience snug,
+A treacherous inclination, -
+But, let me whisper i' your lug,
+Ye're aiblins nae temptation.
+
+Then gently scan your brother man,
+Still gentler sister woman;
+Though they may gang a kennin' wrang,
+To step aside is human:
+One point must still be greatly dark,
+The moving why they do it;
+And just as lamely can ye mark
+How far perhaps they rue it.
+
+Who made the heart, 'tis He alone
+Decidedly can try us;
+He knows each chord, - its various tone,
+Each spring, - its various bias:
+Then at the balance let's be mute;
+We never can adjust it;
+What's done we partly may compute,
+But know not what's resisted.
+
+Robert Burns [1759-1796]
+
+
+THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE, OR THE WONDERFUL "ONE-HOSS SHAY"
+A Logical Story
+
+Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay,
+That was built in such a logical way
+It ran a hundred years to a day,
+And then, of a sudden, it - ah, but stay,
+I'll tell you what happened without delay,
+Scaring the parson into fits,
+Frightening people out of their wits, -
+Have you ever heard of that, I say?
+
+Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
+Georgius Secundus was then alive, -
+Snuffy old drone from the German hive.
+That was the year when Lisbon-town
+Saw the earth open and gulp her down,
+And Braddock's army was done so brown,
+Left without a scalp to its crown.
+It was on the terrible Earthquake-day
+That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay.
+
+Now in building of chaises, I tell you what,
+There is always somewhere a weakest spot, -
+In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill,
+In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill,
+In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace, - lurking still,
+Find it somewhere you must and will, -
+Above or below, or within or without, -
+And that's the reason, beyond a doubt,
+That a chaise breaks down, but doesn't wear out.
+
+But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do,
+With an "I dew vum," or an "I tell yeou,")
+He would build one shay to beat the taown
+'N' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun';
+It should be so built that it couldn' break daown:
+"Fur," said the Deacon, "'t's mighty plain
+Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain;
+'N' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain,
+Is only jest
+T' make that place uz strong uz the rest."
+
+So the Deacon inquired of the village folk
+Where he could find the strongest oak,
+That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke, -
+That was for spokes and floor and sills;
+He sent for lancewood to make the thills;
+The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees,
+The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese,
+But lasts like iron for things like these;
+The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum," -
+Last of its timber, - they couldn't sell 'em,
+Never an axe had seen their chips,
+And the wedges flew from between their lips,
+Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips;
+Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw,
+Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too,
+Steel of the finest, bright and blue;
+Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide;
+Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide
+Found in the pit when the tanner died.
+That was the way he "put her through."
+There! said the Deacon, "naow she'll dew!"
+
+Do!  I tell you, I rather guess
+She was a wonder, and nothing less!
+Colts grew horses, beards turned gray,
+Deacon and deaconess dropped away,
+Children and grandchildren - where were they?
+But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay
+As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day!
+
+EIGHTEEN HUNDRED; - it came and found
+The Deacon's masterpiece strong and sound.
+Eighteen hundred increased by ten;
+"Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then.
+Eighteen hundred and twenty came; -
+Running as usual; much the same.
+Thirty and Forty at last arrive,
+And then come Fifty, and Fifty-Five.
+
+Little of all we value here
+Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year
+Without both feeling and looking queer.
+In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth,
+So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
+(This is a moral that runs at large;
+Take it. - You're welcome. - No extra charge.)
+
+FIRST OF November, - the Earthquake-day, -
+There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay.
+A general flavor of mild decay,
+But nothing local, as one may say.
+There couldn't be, - for the Deacon's art
+Had made it so like in every part
+That there wasn't a chance for one to start.
+For the wheels were just as strong as the thills,
+And the floor was just as strong as the sills,
+And the panels just as strong as the floor,
+And the whipple-tree neither less nor more,
+And the back-crossbar as strong as the fore,
+And spring and axle and hub encore.
+And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt
+In another hour it will be worn out!
+
+First of November, Fifty-five!
+This morning the parson takes a drive.
+Now, small boys, get out of the way!
+Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay,
+Drawn by a rat-railed, ewe-necked bay.
+"Huddup!" said the parson. - Off went they.
+
+The parson was working his Sunday's text,-
+Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed
+At what the - Moses - was coming next.
+All at once the horse stood still,
+Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill.
+First a shiver, and then a thrill,
+Then something decidedly like a spill, -
+And the parson was sitting upon a rock,
+At half past nine by the meet'n'-house clock, -
+Just the hour of the Earthquake shock!
+What do you think the parson found,
+When he got up and stared around?
+The poor old chaise in a heap or mound,
+As if it had been to the mill and ground!
+You see, of course, if you're not a dunce,
+How it went to pieces all at once, -
+All at once, and nothing first, -
+Just as bubbles do when they burst.
+
+End of the wonderful one-hoss shay.
+Logic is logic.  That's all I say.
+
+Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-1894]
+
+
+BALLADE OF A FRIAR
+After Clement Marot
+
+Some ten or twenty times a day,
+To bustle to the town with speed,
+To dabble in what dirt he may, -
+Le Frere Lubin's the man you need!
+But any sober life to lead
+Upon an exemplary plan,
+Requires a Christian indeed, -
+Le Frere Lubin is not the man!
+
+Another's wealth on his to lay,
+With all the craft of guile and greed,
+To leave you bare of pence or pay, -
+Le Frere Lubin's the man you need!
+But watch him with the closest heed,
+And dun him with what force you can, -
+He'll not refund, howe'er you plead, -
+Le Frere Lubin is not the man -
+
+An honest girl to lead astray,
+With subtle saw and promised meed,
+Requires no cunning crone and gray, -
+Le Frere Lubin's the man you need!
+He preaches an ascetic creed,
+But, - try him with the water can -
+A dog will drink, whate'er his breed, -
+Le Frere Lubin is not the man!
+
+ENVOY
+In good to fail, in ill succeed,
+Le Frere Lubin's the man you need!
+In honest works to lead the van,
+Le Frere Lubin is not the man!
+
+Andrew Lang [1844-1912]
+
+
+THE CHAMELEON
+
+Oft has it been my lot to mark
+A proud, conceited, talking spark,
+With eyes, that hardly served at most
+To guard their master 'gainst a post,
+Yet round the world the blade has been
+To see whatever could be seen,
+Returning from his finished tour,
+Grown ten times perter than before;
+Whatever word you chance to drop,
+The traveled fool your mouth will stop;
+"Sir, if my judgment you'll allow,
+I've seen - and sure I ought to know,"
+So begs you'd pay a due submission,
+And acquiesce in his decision.
+
+Two travelers of such a cast,
+As o'er Arabia's wilds they passed,
+And on their way in friendly chat,
+Now talked of this, and then of that,
+Discoursed awhile, 'mongst other matter,
+Of the chameleon's form and nature.
+"A stranger animal," cries one,
+"Sure never lived beneath the sun.
+A lizard's body, lean and long,
+A fish's head, a serpent's tongue,
+Its foot with triple claw disjoined;
+And what a length of tail behind!
+How slow its pace; and then its hue -
+Who ever saw so fine a blue?"
+
+"Hold, there," the other quick replies,
+"'Tis green, - I saw it with these eyes,
+As late with open mouth it lay,
+And warmed it in the sunny ray:
+Stretched at its ease, the beast I viewed
+And saw it eat the air for food."
+"I've seen it, sir, as well as you,
+And must again affirm it blue;
+At leisure I the beast surveyed,
+Extended in the cooling shade."
+"'Tis green, 'tis green, sir, I assure ye!"
+"Green!" cries the other in a fury -
+"Why, sir! - d'ye think I've lost my eyes?"
+"'Twere no great loss," the friend replies,
+"For, if they always serve you thus,
+You'll find them of but little use."
+
+So high at last the contest rose,
+From words they almost came to blows:
+When luckily came by a third -
+To him the question they referred,
+And begged he'd tell 'em, if he knew,
+Whether the thing was green or blue.
+"Sirs," cries the umpire, "cease your pother!
+The creature's neither one or t'other.
+I caught the animal last night,
+And viewed it o'er by candlelight:
+I marked it well - 't was black as jet -
+You stare - but, sirs, I've got it yet,
+And can produce it."  "Pray, sir, do;
+I'll lay my life the thing is blue."
+"And I'll be sworn, that when you've seen
+The reptile, you'll pronounce him green."
+
+"Well, then, at once to ease the doubt,"
+Replies the man, "I'll turn him out:
+And when before your eyes I've set him,
+If you don't find him black, I'll eat him."
+He said: then full before their sight
+Produced the beast, and lo! - 'twas white.
+
+Both stared, the man looked wondrous wise -
+"My children," the chameleon cries,
+(Then first the creature found a tongue),
+"You all are right, and all are wrong:
+When next you talk of what you view,
+Think others see as well as you:
+Nor wonder, if you find that none
+Prefers your eyesight to his own."
+
+After De La Motte, by James Merrick [1720-1769]
+
+
+THE BLIND MEN AND THE ELEPHANT
+A Hindoo Fable
+
+It was six men of Indostan
+To learning much inclined,
+Who went to see the Elephant
+(Though all of them were blind),
+That each by observation
+Might satisfy his mind.
+
+The First approached the Elephant,
+And happening to fall
+Against his broad and sturdy side,
+At once began to bawl:
+"God bless me! but the Elephant
+Is very like a wall!"
+
+The Second, feeling of the tusk,
+Cried, "Ho! what have we here
+So very round and smooth and sharp?
+To me 'tis mighty clear
+This wonder of an Elephant
+Is very like a spear!"
+
+The Third approached the animal,
+And happening to take
+The squirming trunk within his hands,
+Thus boldly up and spake:
+"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
+Is very like a snake!"
+
+The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
+And felt about the knee.
+"What most this wondrous beast is like
+Is mighty plain," quoth he;
+"'Tis clear enough the Elephant
+Is very like a tree!"
+
+The Fifth who chanced to touch the ear,
+Said: "E'en the blindest man
+Can tell what this resembles most;
+Deny the fact who can,
+This marvel of an Elephant
+Is very like a fan!"
+
+The Sixth no sooner had begun
+About the beast to grope,
+Than, seizing on the swinging tail
+That fell within his scope,
+"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
+Is very like a rope!"
+
+And so these men of Indostan
+Disputed loud and long,
+Each in his own opinion
+Exceeding stiff and strong,
+Though each was partly in the right,
+And all were in the wrong!
+
+MORAL
+So oft in theologic wars,
+The disputants, I ween,
+Rail on in utter ignorance
+Of what each other mean,
+And prate about an Elephant
+Not one of them has seen!
+
+John Godfrey Saxe [1816-1887]
+
+
+THE PHILOSOPHER'S SCALES
+
+A monk, when his rites sacerdotal were o'er,
+In the depths of his cell with its stone-covered floor,
+Resigning to thought his chimerical brain,
+Once formed the contrivance we now shall explain;
+But whether by magic's or alchemy's powers
+We know not; indeed, 'tis no business of ours.
+
+Perhaps it was only by patience and care,
+At last, that he brought his invention to bear.
+In youth 'twas projected, but years stole away,
+And ere 'twas complete he was wrinkled and gray;
+But success is secure, unless energy fails;
+And at length he produced the Philosopher's Scales.
+
+"What were they?" you ask.  You shall presently see;
+These scales were not made to weigh sugar and tea.
+Oh no; for such properties wondrous had they,
+That qualities, feelings, and thoughts they could weigh,
+Together with articles small or immense,
+From mountains or planets to atoms of sense.
+
+Naught was there so bulky but there it would lay,
+And naught so ethereal but there it would stay,
+And naught so reluctant but in it must go:
+All which some examples more clearly will show.
+
+The first thing he weighed was the head of Voltaire,
+Which retained all the wit that had ever been there;
+As a weight, he threw in the torn scrap of a leaf
+Containing the prayer of the penitent thief;
+When the skull rose aloft with so sudden a spell
+That it bounced like a ball on the roof of the cell.
+
+One time he put in Alexander the Great,
+With the garment that Dorcas had made, for a weight;
+And though clad in armor from sandals to crown,
+The hero rose up and the garment went down.
+
+A long row of almshouses, amply endowed
+By a well-esteemed Pharisee, busy and proud,
+Next loaded one scale; while the other was pressed
+By those mites the poor widow dropped into the chest:
+Up flew the endowment, not weighing an ounce,
+And down, down the farthing-worth came with a bounce.
+
+By further experiments (no matter how)
+He found that ten chariots weighed less than one plough;
+A sword with gilt trappings rose up in the scale,
+Though balanced by only a ten-penny nail;
+A shield and a helmet, a buckler and spear,
+Weighed less than a widow's uncrystallized tear.
+
+A lord and a lady went up at full sail,
+When a bee chanced to light on the opposite scale;
+Ten doctors, ten lawyers, two courtiers, one earl,
+Ten counsellors' wigs, full of powder and curl,
+All heaped in one balance and swinging from thence,
+Weighed less than a few grains of candor and sense;
+A first-water diamond, with brilliants begirt,
+Than one good potato just washed from the dirt;
+Yet not mountains of silver and gold could suffice
+One pearl to outweigh, - 'twas the Pearl of Great Price.
+
+Last of all, the whole world was bowled in at the grate,
+With the soul of a beggar to serve for a weight,
+When the former sprang up with so strong a rebuff
+That it made a vast rent and escaped at the roof!
+When balanced in air, it ascended on high,
+And sailed up aloft, a balloon in the sky;
+While the scale with the soul in't so mightily fell
+That it jerked the philosopher out of his cell.
+
+Jane Taylor [1783-1824]
+
+
+THE MAIDEN AND THE LILY
+
+A lily in my garden grew,
+Amid the thyme and clover;
+No fairer lily ever blew,
+Search all the wide world over.
+Its beauty passed into my heart:
+I know 'twas very silly,
+But I was then a foolish maid,
+And it - a perfect lily.
+
+One day a learned man came by,
+With years of knowledge laden,
+And him I questioned with a sigh,
+Like any foolish maiden: -
+"Wise sir, please tell me wherein lies -
+I know the question's silly -
+The something that my art defies,
+And makes a perfect lily."
+
+He smiled, then bending plucked the flower,
+Then tore it, leaf and petal,
+And talked to me for full an hour,
+And thought the point to settle: -
+"Therein it lies," at length he cries;
+And I - I know 'twas silly -
+Could only weep and say, "But where -
+O doctor, where's my lily?"
+
+John Fraser [1750-1811]
+
+
+THE OWL-CRITIC
+
+"Who stuffed that white owl?  No one spoke in the shop:
+The barber was busy, and he couldn't stop;
+The customers, waiting their turns, were all reading
+The Daily, the Herald, the Post, little heeding
+The young man who blurted out such a blunt question;
+Not one raised a head, or even made a suggestion;
+And the barber kept on shaving.
+
+"Don't you see, Mister Brown,"
+Cried the youth with a frown,
+"How wrong the whole thing is,
+How preposterous each wing is,
+How flattened the head is, how jammed down the neck is -
+In short, the whole owl, what an ignorant wreck 'tis!
+I make no apology;
+I've learned owl-eology.
+I've passed days and nights in a hundred collections,
+And cannot be blinded to any deflections
+Arising from unskilful fingers that fail
+To stuff a bird right, from his beak to his tail.
+Mister Brown! Mister Brown!
+Do take that bird down,
+Or you'll soon be the laughing-stock all over town!"
+And the barber kept on shaving.
+
+"I've studied owls
+And other night fowls,
+And I tell you
+What I know to be true:
+An owl cannot roost
+With his limbs so unloosed;
+No owl in this world
+Ever had his claws curled,
+Ever had his legs slanted,
+Ever had his bill canted,
+Ever had his neck screwed
+Into that attitude.
+He can't do it, because
+'Tis against all bird-laws.
+Anatomy teaches,
+Ornithology preaches
+An owl has a toe
+That can't turn out so!
+I've made the white owl my study for years,
+And to see such a job almost moves me to tears!
+Mister Brown, I'm amazed
+You should be so gone crazed
+As to put up a bird
+In that posture absurd!
+To look at that owl really brings on a dizziness;
+The man who stuffed him don't half know his business!"
+And the barber kept on shaving.
+
+"Examine those eyes.
+I'm filled with surprise
+Taxidermists should pass
+Off on you such poor glass;
+So unnatural they seem
+They'd make Audubon scream,
+And John Burroughs laugh
+To encounter such chaff.
+Do take that bird down;
+Have him stuffed again, Brown!"
+And the barber kept on shaving.
+
+"With some sawdust and bark
+I could stuff in the dark
+An owl better than that.
+I could make an old hat
+Look more like an owl
+Than that horrid fowl,
+Stuck up there so stiff like a side of coarse leather.
+In fact, about him there's not one natural feather."
+
+Just then, with a wink and a sly normal lurch,
+The owl, very gravely, got down from his perch,
+Walked round, and regarded his fault-finding critic
+(Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance analytic
+And then fairly hooted, as if he would say:
+"Your learning's at fault this time, any way;
+Don't waste it again on a live bird, I pray.
+I'm an owl; you're another.  Sir Critic, good-day!"
+And the barber kept on shaving.
+
+James Thomas Fields [1816-1881]
+
+
+THE BALLAD OF IMITATION
+C'est imiter quelqu'un que de planter des choux. - Alfred De Musset
+
+If they hint, O Musician, the piece that you played
+Is naught but a copy of Chopin or Spohr;
+That the ballad you sing is but merely "conveyed"
+From the stock of the Ames and the Purcells of yore;
+That there's nothing, in short, in the words or the score,
+That is not as out-worn as the "Wandering Jew";
+Make answer - Beethoven could scarcely do more -
+That the man who plants cabbages imitates, too!
+
+If they tell you, Sir Artist, your light and your shade
+Are simply "adapted" from other men's lore;
+That - plainly to speak of a "spade" as a "spade" -
+You've "stolen" your grouping from three or from four;
+That (however the writer the truth may deplore),
+'Twas Gainsborough painted your "Little Boy Blue";
+Smile only serenely - though cut to the core -
+For the man who plants cabbages imitates, too!
+
+And you too, my Poet, be never dismayed
+If they whisper your Epic - "Sir Eperon d'Or" -
+Is nothing but Tennyson thinly arrayed
+In a tissue that's taken from Morris's store;
+That no one, in fact, but a child could ignore
+That you "lift" or "accommodate" all that you do;
+Take heart - though your Pegasus' withers be sore -
+For the man who plants cabbages imitates, too!
+
+POSTCRIPTUM. - And you, whom we all so adore,
+Dear Critics, whose verdicts are always so new! -
+One word in your ear.  There were Critics before. . . .
+And the man who plants cabbages imitates, too!
+
+Austin Dobson [1840-1921]
+
+
+THE CONUNDRUM OF THE WORKSHOPS
+
+When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden's green and gold,
+Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in
+  the mould;
+And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to
+  his mighty heart,
+Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves: "It's pretty, but is it Art?"
+
+Wherefore he called to his wife, and fled to fashion his work anew -
+The first of his race who cared a fig for the first, most dread review;
+And he left his lore to the use of his sons - and that was a glorious gain
+When the Devil chuckled: "Is it Art?" in the ear of the branded Cain.
+
+They builded a tower to shiver the sky and wrench the stars apart,
+Till the Devil grunted behind the bricks: "It's striking, but is it Art?"
+The stone was dropped at the quarry-side and the idle derrick swung,
+While each man talked of the aims of Art, and each in an alien tongue.
+
+They fought and they talked in the North and the South, they talked
+   and they fought in the West,
+Till the waters rose on the pitiful land, and the poor Red Clay had rest -
+Had rest till that dank, blank-canvas dawn when the dove was
+  preened to start,
+And the Devil bubbled below the keel: "It's human, but is it Art?"
+
+The tale is as old as the Eden Tree - and new as the new-cut tooth - 
+For each man knows ere his lip-thatch grows he is master
+  of Art and Truth;
+And each man hears as the twilight nears, to the beat of his dying heart,
+The Devil drum on the darkened pane: "You did it, but was it Art?"
+
+We have learned to whittle the Eden Tree to the shape of a surplice-peg,
+We have learned to bottle our-parents twain in the yelk of an addled egg,
+We know that the tail must wag the dog, for the horse is drawn
+  by the cart;
+But the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old: "It's clever, but is it Art?"
+ 
+When the flicker of London sun falls faint on the clubroom's
+  green and gold,
+The sons of Adam sit them down and scratch with their pens in the mould -
+They scratch with their pens in the mould of their graves, 
+  and the ink and the anguish start,
+For the Devil mutters behind the leaves: "It's pretty, but is it Art?"
+
+Now, if we could win to the Eden Tree where the Four Great Rivers flow,
+And the Wreath of Eve is red on the turf as she left it long ago,
+And if we could come when the sentry slept, and softly scurry through,
+By the favor of God we might know as much - as our father Adam knew.
+
+Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936]
+
+
+THE V-A-S-E
+
+From the madding crowd they stand apart,
+The maidens four and the Work of Art;
+
+And none might tell from sight alone
+In which had Culture ripest grown, -
+
+The Gotham Million fair to see,
+The Philadelphia Pedigree,
+
+The Boston Mind of azure hue,
+Or the soulful Soul from Kalamazoo, -
+
+For all loved Art in a seemly way,
+With an earnest soul and a capital A.
+
+.   .   .   .   .   .
+
+Long they worshipped; but no one broke
+The sacred stillness, until up spoke
+
+The Western one from the nameless place,
+Who blushing said: "What a lovely vace!"
+
+Over three faces a sad smile flew,
+And they edged away from Kalamazoo.
+
+But Gotham's haughty soul was stirred
+To crush the stranger with one small word.
+
+Deftly hiding reproof in praise,
+She cries: "'Tis, indeed, a lovely vaze!"
+
+But brief her unworthy triumph when
+The lofty one from the home of Penn,
+
+With the consciousness of two grandpapas,
+Exclaims: "It is quite a lovely vahs!"
+
+And glances round with an anxious thrill,
+Awaiting the word of Beacon Hill.
+
+But the Boston maid smiles courteouslee,
+And gently murmurs: "Oh pardon me!
+
+"I did not catch your remark, because 
+I was so entranced with that charming vaws!"
+
+Dies erit praegelida
+Sinistra quum Bostonia.
+
+James Jeffrey Roche [1847-1908]
+
+
+HEM AND HAW
+
+Hem and Haw were the sons of sin,
+Created to shally and shirk;
+Hem lay 'round and Haw looked on
+While God did all the work.
+
+Hem was a fogy, and Haw was a prig,
+For both had the dull, dull mind;
+And whenever they found a thing to do,
+They yammered and went it blind.
+
+Hem was the father of bigots and bores;
+As the sands of the sea were they.
+And Haw was the father of all the tribe
+Who criticise to-day.
+
+But God was an artist from the first,
+And knew what he was about;
+While over his shoulder sneered these two,
+And advised him to rub it out.
+
+They prophesied ruin ere man was made:
+"Such folly must surely fail!"
+And when he was done, "Do you think, my Lord,
+He's better without a tail?"
+
+And still in the honest working world,
+With posture and hint and smirk,
+These sons of the devil are standing by
+While Man does all the work.
+
+They balk endeavor and baffle reform,
+In the sacred name of law;
+And over the quavering voice of Hem,
+Is the droning voice of Haw.
+
+Bliss Carman [1861-1929]
+
+
+MINIVER CHEEVY
+
+Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
+Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
+He wept that he was ever born,
+And he had reasons.
+
+Miniver loved the days of old
+When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
+The vision of a warrior bold
+Would set him dancing.
+
+Miniver sighed for what was not,
+And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
+He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
+And Priam's neighbors.
+
+Miniver mourned the ripe renown
+That made so many a name so fragrant;
+He mourned Romance, now on the town,
+And Art, a vagrant.
+
+Miniver loved the Medici,
+Albeit he had never seen one;
+He would have sinned incessantly
+Could he have been one.
+
+Miniver cursed the commonplace,
+And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
+He missed the medieval grace
+Of iron clothing.
+
+Miniver scorned the gold he sought,
+But sore annoyed was he without it;
+Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
+And thought about it.
+
+Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
+Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
+Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
+And kept on drinking. 
+
+Edwin Arlington Robinson [1869-1935]
+
+
+THEN AG'IN
+
+Jim Bowker, he said, ef he'd had a fair show,
+And a big enough town for his talents to grow,
+And the least bit assistance in hoein' his row,
+Jim Bowker, he said, 
+He'd filled the world full of the sound of his name,
+An' clumb the top round in the ladder of fame;
+It may have been so;
+I dunno;
+Jest so it might been, 
+Then ag'in -
+
+But he had tarnal luck - everythin' went ag'in him,
+The arrers er fortune they allus 'ud pin him;
+So he didn't get no chance to show off what was in him.
+Jim Bowker, he said,
+Ef he'd had a fair show, you couldn't tell where he'd come,
+An' the feats he'd a-done, an' the heights he'd a-clumb -
+It may have been so;
+I dunno;
+Jest so it might been,
+Then ag'in -
+
+But we're all like Jim Bowker, thinks I, more or less -
+Charge fate for our bad luck, ourselves for success,
+An' give fortune the blame for all our distress,
+As Jim Bowker, he said.
+Ef it hadn' been for luck an' misfortune an' sich,
+We might a-been famous, an' might a-been rich.
+It might be jest so;
+I dunno;
+Jest so it might been,
+Then ag'in -
+
+Sam Walter Foss [1858-1911]
+
+
+A CONSERVATIVE
+
+The garden beds I wandered by
+One bright and cheerful morn,
+When I found a new-fledged butterfly,
+A-sitting on a thorn,
+A black and crimson butterfly,
+All doleful and forlorn.
+
+I thought that life could have no sting
+To infant butterflies,
+So I gazed on this unhappy thing
+With wonder and surprise,
+While sadly with his waving wing
+He wiped his weeping eyes.
+
+Said I, "What can the matter be?
+Why weepest thou so sore?
+With garden fair and sunlight free
+And flowers in goodly store:" -
+But he only turned away from me
+And burst into a roar.
+
+Cried he, "My legs are thin and few
+Where once I had a swarm!
+Soft fuzzy fur - a joy to view -
+Once kept my body warm,
+Before these flapping wing-things grew,
+To hamper and deform!"
+
+At that outrageous bug I shot
+The fury of mine eye;
+Said I, in scorn all burning hot,
+In rage and anger high,
+"You ignominious idiot!
+Those wings are made to fly!
+
+'I do not want to fly," said he,
+"I only want to squirm!"
+And he drooped his wings dejectedly,
+But still his voice was firm:
+"I do not want to be a fly!
+I want to be a worm!"
+
+O yesterday of unknown lack!
+To-day of unknown bliss!
+I left my fool in red and black,
+The last I saw was this, -
+The creature madly climbing back
+Into his chrysalis.
+
+Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman [1860-1935]
+
+
+SIMILAR CASES
+
+There was once a little animal,
+No bigger than a fox,
+And on five toes he scampered
+Over Tertiary rocks.
+They called him Eohippus,
+And they called him very small,
+And they thought him of no value -
+When they thought of him at all;
+For the lumpish old Dinoceras
+And Coryphodon so slow
+Were the heavy aristocracy
+In days of long ago.
+
+Said the little Eohippus,
+"I am going to be a horse!
+And on my middle finger-nails
+To run my earthly course! 
+I'm going to have a flowing tail!
+I'm going to have a mane!
+I'm going to stand fourteen hands high
+On the psychozoic plain!"
+
+The Coryphodon was horrified,
+The Dinoceras was shocked;
+And they chased young Eohippus,
+But he skipped away and mocked.
+And they laughed enormous laughter,
+And they groaned enormous groans,
+And they bade young Eohippus
+Go view his father's bones.
+Said they, "You always were as small
+And mean as now we see,
+And that's conclusive evidence
+That you're always going to be.
+What!  Be a great, tall, handsome beast,
+With hoofs to gallop on?
+Why!  You'd have to change your nature!"
+Said the Loxolophodon.
+They considered him disposed of,
+And retired with gait serene;
+That was the way they argued
+In "the early Eocene."
+
+There was once an Anthropoidal Ape,
+Far smarter than the rest,
+And everything that they could do
+He always did the best;
+So they naturally disliked him,
+And they gave him shoulders cool,
+And when they had to mention him
+They said he was a fool.
+
+Cried this pretentious Ape one day,
+"I'm going to be a Man!
+And stand upright, and hunt, and fight,
+And conquer all I can!
+I'm going to cut down forest trees,
+To make my houses higher!
+I'm going to kill the Mastodon!
+I'm going to make a fire!"
+
+Loud screamed the Anthropoidal Apes
+With laughter wild and gay;
+They tried to catch that boastful one,
+But he always got away.
+So they yelled at him in chorus,
+Which he minded not a whit;
+And they pelted him with cocoanuts,
+Which didn't seem to hit.
+And then they gave him reasons
+Which they thought of much avail,
+To prove how his preposterous
+Attempt was sure to fail.
+Said the sages, "In the first place,
+The thing cannot be done!
+And, second, if it could be,
+It would not be any fun!
+And, third, and most conclusive,
+And admitting no reply,
+You would have to change your nature!
+We should like to see you try!"
+They chuckled then triumphantly,
+These lean and hairy shapes,
+For these things passed as arguments
+With the Anthropoidal Apes.
+
+There was once a Neolithic Man,
+An enterprising wight,
+Who made his chopping implements
+Unusually bright.
+Unusually clever he,
+Unusually brave,
+And he drew delightful Mammoths
+On the borders of his cave.
+To his Neolithic neighbors,
+Who were startled and surprised,
+Said he, "My friends, in course of time,
+We shall be civilized!
+We are going to live in cities!
+We are going to fight in wars!
+We are going to eat three times a day
+Without the natural cause!
+We are going to turn life upside down
+About a thing called gold!
+We are going to want the earth, and take
+As much as we can hold!
+We are going to wear great piles of stuff
+Outside our proper skins!
+We are going to have diseases!
+And Accomplishments!!  And Sins!!!"
+
+Then they all rose up in fury
+Against their boastful friend,
+For prehistoric patience
+Cometh quickly to an end.
+Said one, "This is chimerical!
+Utopian!  Absurd!"
+Said another, "What a stupid life!
+Too dull, upon my word!"
+Cried all, "Before such things can come,
+You idiotic child,
+You must alter Human Nature!"
+And they all sat back and smiled.
+Thought they, "An answer to that last
+It will be hard to find!"
+It was a clinching argument
+To the Neolithic Mind!
+
+Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman [1860-1935]
+
+
+MAN AND THE ASCIDIAN
+A Morality
+
+"The Ancestor remote of Man,"
+Says Darwin, "is the Ascidian,"
+A scanty sort of water-beast
+That, ninety million years at least
+Before Gorillas came to be,
+Went swimming up and down the sea.
+
+Their ancestors the pious praise,
+And like to imitate their ways;
+How, then, does our first parent live,
+What lesson has his life to give?
+
+The Ascidian tadpole, young and gay,
+Doth Life with one bright eye survey,
+His consciousness has easy play.
+He's sensitive to grief and pain,
+Has tail, a spine, and bears a brain,
+And everything that fits the state
+Of creatures we call vertebrate.
+But age comes on; with sudden shock
+He sticks his head against a rock!
+His tail drops off, his eye drops in,
+His brain's absorbed into his skin;
+He does not move, nor feel, nor know
+The tidal water's ebb and flow,
+But still abides, unstirred, alone,
+A sucker sticking to a stone.
+
+And we, his children, truly we
+In youth are, like the Tadpole, free.
+And where we would we blithely go,
+Have brains and hearts, and feel and know.
+Then Age comes on!  To Habit we
+Affix ourselves and are not free;
+The Ascidian's rooted to a rock,
+And we are bond-slaves of the clock;
+Our rocks are Medicine - Letters - Law,
+From these our heads we cannot draw:
+Our loves drop off, our hearts drop in,
+And daily thicker grows our skin.
+
+Ah, scarce we live, we scarcely know
+The wide world's moving ebb and flow,
+The clanging currents ring and shock,
+But we are rooted to the rock.
+And thus at ending of his span,
+Blind, deaf, and indolent, does Man
+Revert to the Ascidian.
+
+Andrew Lang [1844-1912]
+
+
+THE CALF-PATH
+
+One day, through the primeval wood,
+A calf walked home, as good calves should;
+But made a trail all bent askew,
+A crooked trail as all calves do.
+
+Since then two hundred years have fled,
+And, I infer, the calf is dead.
+But still he left behind his trail,
+And thereby hangs my moral tale.
+
+The trail was taken up next day
+By a lone dog that passed that way;
+And then a wise bell-wether sheep
+Pursued the trail o'er vale and steep,
+And drew the flock behind him, too,
+As good bell-wethers always do.
+
+And from that day, o'er hill and glade,
+Through those old woods a path was made;
+And many men wound in and out,
+And dodged, and turned, and bent about
+And uttered words of righteous wrath
+Because 'twas such a crooked path.
+
+But still they followed - do not laugh -
+The first migrations of that calf,
+And through this winding wood-way stalked,
+Because he wobbled when he walked.
+
+This forest path became a lane,
+That bent, and turned, and turned again;
+This crooked lane became a road,
+Where many a poor horse with his load
+Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
+And traveled some three miles in one.
+And thus a century and a half
+They trod the footsteps of that calf.
+
+The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
+The road became a village street;
+And this, before men were aware,
+A city's crowded thoroughfare;
+And soon the central street was this
+Of a renowned metropolis;
+And men two centuries and a half
+Trod in the footsteps of that calf.
+
+Each day a hundred thousand rout
+Followed the zigzag calf about;
+And o'er his crooked journey went
+The traffic of a continent.
+A hundred thousand men were led
+By one calf near three centuries dead.
+They followed still his crooked way,
+And lost one hundred years a day;
+For thus such reverence is lent
+To well-established precedent.
+
+A moral lesson this might teach,
+Were I ordained and called to preach;
+For men are prone to go it blind
+Along the calf-paths of the mind,
+And work away from sun to sun
+To do what other men have done.
+They follow in the beaten track,
+And out and in, and forth and back,
+And still their devious course pursue,
+To keep the path that others do.
+
+But how the wise old wood-gods laugh,
+Who saw the first primeval calf!
+Ah! many things this tale might teach, -
+But I am not ordained to preach.
+
+Sam Walter Foss [1858-1911]
+
+
+WEDDED BLISS
+
+"O come and be my mate!" said the Eagle to the Hen;
+"I love to soar, but then
+I want my mate to rest
+Forever in the nest!"
+Said the Hen, I cannot fly,
+I have no wish to try,
+But I joy to see my mate careering through the sky!"
+They wed, and cried, "Ah, this is Love, my own!"
+And the Hen sat, and the Eagle soared, alone.
+
+"O come and be my mate!" said the Lion to the Sheep;
+"My love for you is deep!
+I slay, - a Lion should, -
+But you are mild and good!"
+Said the Sheep, "I do no ill -
+Could not, had I the will -
+But I joy to see my mate pursue, devour and kill."
+They wed, and cried, "Ah, this is Love, my own!"
+And the Sheep browsed, the Lion prowled, alone.
+
+"O come and be my mate!" said the Salmon to the Clam;
+"You are not wise, but I am.
+I know the sea and stream as well;
+You know nothing but your shell."
+Said the Clam, "I'm slow of motion,
+But my love is all devotion,
+And I joy to have my mate traverse lake and stream and ocean!"
+They wed, and cried, "Ah, this is Love, my own!"
+And the Clam sucked, the Salmon swam, alone.
+
+Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman [1860-1935}
+
+
+PARADISE: A HINDOO LEGEND
+
+A Hindoo died; a happy thing to do,
+When fifty years united to a shrew.
+Released, he hopefully for entrance cries
+Before the gates of Brahma's paradise.
+"Hast been through purgatory?" Brahma said.
+"I have been married!" and he hung his head.
+"Come in! come in! and welcome, too, my son!
+Marriage and purgatory are as one."
+In bliss extreme he entered heaven's door,
+And knew the peace he ne'er had known before.
+
+He scarce had entered in the gardens fair,
+Another Hindoo asked admission there.
+The self-same question Brahma asked again:
+"Hast been through purgatory?"  "No; what then?"
+"Thou canst not enter!" did the god reply.
+"He who went in was there no more than I."
+"All that is true, but he has married been,
+And so on earth has suffered for all his sin."
+"Married?  Tis well, for I've been married twice."
+"Begone!  We'll have no fools, in paradise!"
+
+George Birdseye [1844-1919]
+
+
+AD CHLOEN, M. A.
+(Fresh From Her Cambridge Examination)
+
+Lady, very fair are you,
+And your eyes are very blue,
+And your hose;
+And your brow is like the snow,
+And the various things you know
+Goodness knows.
+
+And the rose-flush on your cheek,
+And your algebra and Greek
+Perfect are;
+And that loving lustrous eye
+Recognizes in the sky
+Every star.
+
+You have pouting piquant lips,
+You can doubtless an eclipse
+Calculate;
+But for your cerulean hue,
+I had certainly from you
+Met my fate.
+
+If by an arrangement dual
+I were Adams mixed with Whewell,
+Then some day
+I, as wooer, perhaps might come
+To so sweet an Artium
+Magistra.
+
+Mortimer Collins [1827-1876]
+
+
+"AS LIKE THE WOMAN AS YOU CAN"
+
+"As like the Woman as you can" -
+(Thus the New Adam was beguiled) -
+"So shall you touch the Perfect Man" -
+(God in the Garden heard and smiled).
+"Your father perished with his day:
+A clot of passions fierce and blind,
+He fought, he hacked, he crushed his way:
+Your muscles, Child, must be of mind.
+
+"The Brute that lurks and irks within,
+How, till you have him gagged and bound,
+Escape the foulest form of Sin?"
+(God in the Garden laughed and frowned).
+"So vile, so rank, the bestial mood
+In which the race is bid to be,
+It wrecks the Rarer Womanhood:
+Live, therefore, you, for Purity!
+
+"Take for your mate no gallant croup,
+No girl all grace and natural will:
+To work her mission were to stoop,
+Maybe to lapse, from Well to Ill.
+Choose one of whom your grosser make" -
+(God in the Garden laughed outright) -
+"The true refining touch may take,
+Till both attain to Life's last height.
+
+"There, equal, purged of soul and sense,
+Beneficent, high-thinking, just,
+Beyond the appeal of Violence,
+Incapable of common Lust,
+In mental Marriage still prevail" -
+(God in the Garden hid His face) -
+"Till you achieve that Female-Male
+In which shall culminate the race."
+
+William Ernest Henley [1849-1903]
+
+
+"NO FAULT IN WOMEN"
+
+No fault in women to refuse
+The offer which they most would choose:
+No fault in women to confess
+How tedious they are in their dress:
+No fault in women to lay on
+The tincture of vermilion,
+And there to give the cheek a dye
+Of white, where Nature doth deny:
+No fault in women to make show
+Of largeness, when they're nothing so;
+When, true it is, the outside swells
+With inward buckram, little else:
+No fault in women, though they be
+But seldom from suspicion free:
+No fault in womankind at all,
+If they but slip, and never fall.
+
+Robert Herrick [1591-1674]
+
+
+"ARE WOMEN FAIR?"
+
+"Are women fair?"  Ay! wondrous fair to see too.
+"Are women sweet?"  Yea, passing sweet they be too;
+Most fair and sweet to them that only love them;
+Chaste and discreet to all save those that prove them.
+
+"Are women wise?"  Not wise, but they be witty.
+"Are women witty?"  Yea, the more the pity;
+They are so witty, and in wit so wily,
+That be you ne'er so wise, they will beguile ye.
+
+"Are women fools?"  Not fools, but fondlings many.
+"Can women found be faithful unto any?"
+When snow-white swans do turn to color sable,
+Then women fond will be both firm and stable.
+
+"Are women saints?"  No saints, nor yet no devils.
+"Are women good?"  Not good, but needful evils;
+So Angel-like, that devils I do not doubt them;
+So needful evils, that few can live without them.
+
+"Are women proud?"  Ay! passing proud, and praise them.
+"Are women kind?"  Ay! wondrous kind and please them,
+Or so imperious, no man can endure them,
+Or so kind-hearted, any may procure them.
+
+Francis Davison (?) [fl. 1602]
+
+
+A STRONG HAND
+
+Tender-handed stroke a nettle,
+And it stings you for your pains;
+Grasp it like a lad of mettle,
+And it soft as silk remains:
+
+So it is with these fair creatures,
+Use them kindly, they rebel;
+But be rough as nutmeg graters,
+And the rogues obey you well.
+
+Aaron Hill [1685-1750]
+
+
+WOMEN'S LONGING 
+From "Women Pleased"
+
+Tell me what is that only thing
+For which all women long;
+Yet, having what they most desire,
+To have it does them wrong?
+
+'Tis not to be chaste, nor fair,
+(Such gifts malice may impair),
+Richly trimmed, to walk or ride,
+Or to wanton unespied,
+To preserve an honest name
+And so to give it up to fame -
+These are toys.  In good or ill
+They desire to have their will:
+Yet, when they have it, they abuse it,
+For they know not how to use it.
+
+John Fletcher [1579-1625]
+
+
+TRIOLET
+
+All women born are so perverse
+No man need boast their love possessing.
+If naught seem better, nothing's worse:
+All women born are so perverse.
+From Adam's wife, that proved a curse,
+Though God had made her for a blessing,
+All women born are so perverse
+No man need boast their love possessing.
+
+Robert Bridges [1844-1930]
+
+
+THE FAIR CIRCASSIAN
+
+Forty Viziers saw I go
+Up to the Seraglio,
+Burning, each and every man,
+For the fair Circassian.
+
+Ere the morn had disappeared,
+Every Vizier wore a beard;
+Ere the afternoon was born,
+Every Vizier came back shorn.
+
+"Let the man that woos to win
+Woo with an unhairy chin;"
+Thus she said, and as she bid
+Each devoted Vizier did.
+
+From the beards a cord she made,
+Looped it to the balustrade,
+Glided down and went away
+To her own Circassia.
+
+When the Sultan heard, waxed he
+Somewhat wroth, and presently
+In the noose themselves did lend
+Every Vizier did suspend.
+
+Sages all, this rhyme who read,
+Guard your beards with prudent heed,
+And beware the wily plans
+Of the fair Circassians.
+
+Richard Garnett [1835-1906]
+
+
+THE FEMALE PHAETON
+
+Thus Kitty, beautiful and young,
+And wild as colt untamed,
+Bespoke the fair from whence she sprung,
+With little rage inflamed:
+
+Inflamed with rage at sad restraint,
+Which wise mamma ordained;
+And sorely vexed to play the saint,
+Whilst wit and beauty reigned:
+
+"Shall I thumb holy books, confined
+With Abigails, forsaken?
+Kitty's for other things designed,
+Or I am much mistaken.
+
+"Must Lady Jenny frisk about,
+And visit with her cousins?
+At balls must she make all the rout,
+And bring home hearts by dozens?
+
+"What has she better, pray, than I,
+What hidden charms to boast,
+That all mankind for her should die,
+Whilst I am scarce a toast?
+
+"Dearest mamma! for once let me,
+Unchained, my fortune try;
+I'll have my earl as well as she,
+Or know the reason why.
+
+"I'll soon with Jenny's pride quit score,
+Make all her lovers fall:
+They'll grieve I was not loosed before;
+She, I was loosed at all."
+
+Fondness prevailed, mamma gave way;
+Kitty, at heart's desire,
+Obtained the chariot for a day,
+And set the world on fire.
+
+Matthew Prior [1664-1721]
+
+
+THE LURE
+
+"What bait do you use," said a Saint to the Devil,
+"When you fish where the souls of men abound?"
+"Well, for special tastes," said the King of Evil,
+"Gold and Fame are the best I've found."
+
+"But for general use?" asked the Saint.  "Ah, then,"
+Said the Demon, "I angle for Man, not men,
+And a thing I hate
+Is to change my bait,
+So I fish with a woman the whole year round."
+
+John Boyle O'Reilly [1844-1890]
+
+
+THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES
+
+When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
+He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside;
+But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail,
+For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
+
+When Nag, the wayside cobra, hears the careless foot of man,
+He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can;
+But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail,
+For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
+
+When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
+They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
+'Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale,
+For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
+
+Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
+For the Woman that God gave him isn't his to give away;
+But when hunter meets with husband, each confirms the other's tale -
+The female of the species is more deadly than the male.
+
+Man, a bear in most relations - worm and savage otherwise, -
+Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
+Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
+To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.
+
+Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
+To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
+Mirth obscene diverts his anger - Doubt and Pity oft perplex
+Him in dealing with an issue - to the scandal of The Sex!
+
+But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
+Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;
+And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
+The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.
+
+She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
+May not deal in doubt or pity - must not swerve for fact or jest.
+These be purely male diversions - not in these her honor dwells.
+She, the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.
+
+She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
+As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate;
+And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
+Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.
+
+She is wedded to convictions - in default of grosser ties;
+Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies! -
+He will meet no cool discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
+Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.
+
+Unprovoked and awful charges - even so the she-bear fights;
+Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons - even so the cobra bites;
+Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
+And the victim writhes in anguish - like the Jesuit with the squaw!
+
+So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
+With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
+Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
+To some God of Abstract Justice - which no woman understands.
+
+And Man knows it!  Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
+Must command but may not govern - shall enthral but not enslave him. 
+And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
+That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.
+
+Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936]
+
+
+THE WOMAN WITH THE SERPENT'S TONGUE
+
+She is not old, she is not young,
+The woman with the Serpent's Tongue,
+The haggard cheek, the hungering eye,
+The poisoned words that wildly fly,
+The famished face, the fevered hand, -
+Who slights the worthiest in the land,
+Sneers at the just, contemns the brave,
+And blackens goodness in its grave.
+
+In truthful numbers be she sung,
+The Woman with the Serpent's Tongue;
+Concerning whom, Fame hints at things
+Told but in shrugs and whisperings:
+Ambitious from her natal hour,
+And scheming all her life for power;
+With little left of seemly pride;
+With venomed fangs she cannot hide;
+Who half makes love to you to-day,
+
+To-morrow gives her guest away.
+Burnt up within by that strange soul
+She cannot slake, or yet control:
+Malignant-lipped, unkind, unsweet;
+Past all example indiscreet;
+Hectic, and always overstrung, -
+The Woman with the Serpent's Tongue.
+
+To think that such as she can mar
+Names that among the noblest are!
+That hands like hers can touch the springs
+That move who knows what men and things?
+That on her will their fates have hung! -
+The Woman with the Serpent's Tongue.
+
+William Watson [1858-1935]
+
+
+SUPPOSE
+
+How sad if, by some strange new law,
+All kisses scarred!
+For she who is most beautiful
+Would be most marred.
+
+And we might be surprised to see
+Some lovely wife
+Smooth-visaged, while a seeming prude
+Was marked for life.
+
+Anne Reeve Aldrich [1866-1892]
+
+
+TOO CANDID BY HALF
+
+As Tom and his wife were discoursing one day
+Of their several faults in a bantering way,
+Said she, "Though my wit you disparage,
+I'm sure, my dear husband, our friends will attest
+This much, at the least, that my judgment is best."
+Quoth Tom, "So they said at our marriage."
+
+John Godfrey Saxe [1816-1887]
+
+
+FABLE
+
+The mountain and the squirrel
+Had a quarrel,
+And the former called the latter "Little Prig;"
+Bun replied,
+"You are doubtless very big;
+But all sorts of things and weather
+Must be taken in together,
+To make up a year
+And a sphere.
+And I think it no disgrace
+To occupy my place.
+If I'm not so large as you,
+You are not so small as I,
+And not half so spry. 
+
+I'll not deny you make
+A very pretty squirrel track;
+Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;
+If I cannot carry forests on thy back,
+Neither can you crack a nut.
+
+Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-1882]
+
+
+WOMAN'S WILL
+
+That man's a fool who tries by art and skill
+To stem the torrent of a woman's will:
+For if she will, she will; you may depend on't -
+And if she won't, she won't - and there's an end on't.
+
+Unknown
+
+
+WOMAN'S WILL
+
+Men, dying, make their wills, but wives
+Escape a task so sad;
+Why should they make what all their lives
+The gentle dames have had?
+
+John Godfrey Saxe [1816-1887]
+
+
+PLAYS
+
+Alas, how soon the hours are over
+Counted us out to play the lover!
+And how much narrower is the stage
+Allotted us to play the sage!
+
+But when we play the fool, how wide
+The theatre expands! beside,
+How long the audience sits before us!
+How many prompters! what a chorus!
+
+Walter Savage Landor [1775-1864]
+
+
+THE REMEDY WORSE THAN THE DISEASE
+
+I sent for Ratcliffe; was so ill,
+That other doctors gave me over:
+He felt my pulse, prescribed his pill,
+And I was likely to recover.
+
+But, when the wit began to wheeze,
+And wine had warmed the politician,
+Cured yesterday of my disease,
+I died last night of my physician.
+
+Matthew Prior [1664-1721]
+
+
+THE NET OF LAW
+
+The net of law is spread so wide,
+No sinner from its sweep may hide.
+
+Its meshes are so fine and strong,
+They take in every child of wrong.
+
+O wondrous web of mystery!
+Big fish alone escape from thee!
+
+James Jeffrey Roche [1847-1908]
+
+
+COLOGNE
+
+In Koln, a town of monks and bones,
+And pavements fanged with murderous stones,
+And rags, and hags, and hideous wenches;
+I counted two and seventy stenches,
+All well defined, and several stinks!
+Ye Nymphs that reign o'er sewers and sinks,
+The river Rhine, it is well known,
+Doth wash your city of Cologne;
+But tell me, Nymphs! what power divine
+Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?
+
+Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1772-1834]
+
+
+EPITAPH ON CHARLES II
+
+Here lies our Sovereign Lord the King,
+Whose word no man relies on,
+Who never said a foolish thing,
+Nor ever did a wise one.
+
+John Wilmot [1647-1680]
+
+
+CERTAIN MAXIMS OF HAFIZ
+
+I
+If It be pleasant to look on, stalled in the packed serai,
+Does not the Young Man try Its temper and pace ere he buy?
+If She be pleasant to look on, what does the Young Man say?
+"Lo!  She is pleasant to look on, give Her to me today!"
+
+II
+Yea, though a Kaffir die, to him is remitted Jehannum
+If he borrowed in life from a native at sixty per cent per annum.
+
+III
+Blister we not for bursati?  So when the heart is vexed,
+The pain of one maiden's refusal is drowned in the pain of the next.
+
+IV
+The temper of chums, the love of your wife, and a new piano's tune -
+Which of the three will you trust at the end of an Indian June?
+
+V
+Who are the rulers of Ind - to whom shall we bow the knee?
+Make your peace with the women, and men will make you L. G.
+
+VI
+Does the woodpecker flit round the young ferash?
+Does the grass clothe a new-built wall?
+Is she under thirty, the woman who holds a boy in her thrall?
+
+VI
+If She grow suddenly gracious - reflect. Is it all for thee?
+The black-buck is stalked through the bullock, and Man through jealousy.
+
+VIII
+Seek not for favor of women.  So shall you find it indeed.
+Does not the boar break cover just when you're lighting a weed?
+
+IX
+If He play, being young and unskilful, for shekels of silver and gold,
+Take His money, my son, praising Allah.  The kid was ordained to be sold.
+
+X
+With a "weed" among men or horses verily this is the best,
+That you work him in office or dog-cart lightly - but give him no rest.
+
+XI
+Pleasant the snaffle of Courtship, improving the manners and carriage;
+But the colt who is wise will abstain from the terrible thornbit
+  of Marriage.
+
+XII
+As the thriftless gold of the babul, so is the gold that we spend
+On a Derby Sweep, or our neighbor's wife, or the horse that we buy
+  from a friend.
+
+XIII
+The ways of a man with a maid be strange, yet simple and tame
+To the ways of a man with a horse, when selling or racing that same.
+
+XIV
+In public Her face turneth to thee, and pleasant Her smile when ye meet.
+It is ill.  The cold rocks of El-Gidar smile thus on the waves at
+  their feet.
+In public Her face is averted, with anger She nameth thy name.
+It is well.  Was there ever a loser content with the loss of the game?
+
+XV
+If She have spoken a word, remember thy lips are sealed,
+And the Brand of the Dog is upon him by whom is the secret revealed.
+If She have written a letter, delay not an instant, but burn it.
+Tear it in pieces, O Fool, and the wind to her mate shall return it!
+If there be trouble to Herward, and a lie of the blackest can clear,
+Lie, while thy lips can move or a man is alive to hear.
+
+XVI
+My Son, if a maiden deny thee and scufflingly bid thee give o'er,
+Yet lip meets with lip at the lastward - get out!
+She has been there before.
+They are pecked on the ear and the chin and the nose
+  who are lacking in lore.
+
+XVII
+If we fall in the race, though we win, the hoof-slide is scarred
+  on the course.
+Though Allah and Earth pardon Sin, remaineth forever Remorse.
+
+XVIII
+"By all I am misunderstood!" if the Matron shall say, or the Maid: -
+"Alas! I do not understand," my son, be thou nowise afraid.
+In vain in the sight of the Bird is the net of the Fowler displayed.
+
+XIX
+My Son, if I, Hafiz, thy father, take hold of thy knees in my pain,
+Demanding thy name on stamped paper, one day or one hour - refrain.
+Are the links of thy fetters so light that thou cravest
+  another man's chain?
+
+Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936]
+
+
+A BAKER'S DUZZEN UV WIZE SAWZ
+
+Them ez wants, must choose.
+Them ez hez, must lose.
+Them ez knows, won't blab.
+Them ez guesses, will gab.
+Them ez borrows, sorrows.
+Them ez lends, spends.
+Them ez gives, lives.
+Them ez keeps dark, is deep.
+Them ez kin earn; kin keep.
+Them ez aims, hits.
+Them ez hez, gits.
+Them ez waits, win.
+Them ez will, kin.
+
+Edward Rowland Sill [1841-1887]
+
+
+EPIGRAMS
+
+What is an epigram? a dwarfish whole,
+Its body brevity, and wit its soul.
+
+Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1772-1834]
+
+---------------
+
+As in smooth oil the razor best is whet,
+So wit is by politeness sharpest set;
+Their want of edge from their offence is seen,
+Both pain the heart when exquisitely keen.
+
+Unknown
+
+---------------
+
+"I hardly ever ope my lips," one cries;
+"Simonides, what think you of my rule?"
+"If you're a fool, I think you're very wise;
+If you are wise, I think you are a fool."
+
+Richard Garnett [1835-1906]
+
+---------------
+
+Philosopher, whom dost thou most affect,
+Stoics austere, or Epicurus' sect?
+Friend, 'tis my grave infrangible design
+With those to study, and with these to dine.
+
+Richard Garnett [1835-1906]
+
+---------------
+
+Joy is the blossom, sorrow is the fruit,
+Of human life; and worms are at the root.
+
+Walter Savage Landor [1775-1864]
+
+---------------
+
+No truer word, save God's, was ever spoken,
+Than that the largest heart is soonest broken.
+
+Walter Savage Landor [1775-1864]
+
+---------------
+
+This house, where once a lawyer dwelt,
+Is now a smith's.  Alas!
+How rapidly the iron age
+Succeeds the age of brass!
+
+William Erskine [1769-1822]
+
+---------------
+
+"I would," says Fox, "a tax devise
+That shall not fall on me."
+"Then tax receipts," Lord North replies,
+"For those you never see."
+
+Richard Brinsley Sheridan [1751-1816]
+
+---------------
+
+You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come.
+Knock as you please, - there's nobody at home.
+
+Alexander Pope [1688-1744]
+
+---------------
+
+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.
+
+Samuel Johnson [1709-1784]
+
+---------------
+
+Life is a jest, and all things show it;
+I said so once, and now I know it.
+
+John Gay [1685-1732]
+
+---------------
+
+I am his Highness' dog at Kew.
+Pray, sir, tell me, - whose dog are you?
+
+Alexander Pope [1688-1744]
+
+---------------
+
+Sir, I admit your general rule,
+That every poet is a fool,
+But you yourself may serve to show it,
+That every fool is not a poet.
+
+Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1772-1834]
+
+---------------
+
+Damis, an author cold and weak,
+Thinks as a critic he's divine;
+Likely enough; we often make
+Good vinegar of sorry wine.
+
+Unknown
+
+---------------
+
+Swans sing before they die - 'twere no bad thing
+Did certain persons die before they sing.
+
+Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1772-1834]
+
+---------------
+
+He who in his pocket hath no money
+Should, in his mouth, be never without honey.
+
+Unknown
+
+---------------
+
+Nobles and heralds, by your leave,
+Here lies what once was Matthew Prior,
+The son of Adam and of Eve;
+Can Bourbon or Nassau claim higher?
+
+Matthew Prior [1664-1721]
+
+---------------
+
+Here lie I, Martin Elginbrodde;
+Hae mercy o' my soul, Lord God,
+As I wad do were I Lord God,
+And ye were Martin Elginbrodde.
+
+George Macdonald [1824-1905]
+
+---------------
+
+Who killed Kildare?  Who dared Kildare to kill?
+Death killed Kildare - who dare kill whom he will.
+
+Jonathan Swift [1667-1745]
+
+---------------
+
+With death doomed to grapple,
+Beneath the cold slab he
+Who lied in the chapel
+Now lies in the abbey.
+
+Byron's epitaph for Pitt
+
+---------------
+
+When doctrines meet with general approbation,
+It is not heresy, but reformation.
+
+David Garrick [1717-1779]
+
+---------------
+
+Treason doth never prosper; what's the reason?
+Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
+
+John Harington [1561-1612]
+
+---------------
+
+God bless the King - I mean the faith's defender!
+God bless (no harm in blessing!) the Pretender!
+But who pretender is, or who is King -
+God bless us all! - that's quite another thing.
+
+John Byrom [1692-1763]
+
+---------------
+
+'Tis highly rational, we can't dispute,
+The Love, being naked, should promote a suit:
+But doth not oddity to him attach
+Whose fire's so oft extinguished by a match?
+
+Richard Garnett [1835-1906]
+
+---------------
+
+"Come, come," said Tom's father, "at your time of life,
+There's no longer excuse for thus playing the rake. -
+It is time you should think, boy, of taking a wife." -
+Why, so it is, father, - whose wife shall I take?"
+
+Thomas Moore [1779-1852]
+
+---------------
+
+When Eve upon the first of men
+The apple pressed with specious cant,
+O, what a thousand pities then
+That Adam was not Adam-ant!
+
+Thomas Moore [1779-1852]
+
+---------------
+
+Whilst Adam slept, Eve from his side arose:
+Strange! his first sleep should be his last repose!
+
+Unknown
+
+---------------
+
+"What? rise again with all one's bones,"
+Quoth Giles, "I hope you fib:
+I trusted, when I went to Heaven,
+To go without my rib.
+
+Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1772-1834]
+
+---------------
+
+Here lies my wife: here let her lie!
+Now she's at rest, and so am I.
+
+John Dryden [1631-1700]
+
+---------------
+
+After such years of dissension and strife,
+Some wonder that Peter should weep for his wife;
+But his tears on her grave are nothing surprising, -
+He's laying her dust, for fear of its rising.
+
+Thomas Hood [1799-1845]
+
+
+WRITTEN ON A LOOKING-GLASS
+
+I change, and so do women too;
+But I reflect, which women never do.
+
+Unknown
+
+
+AN EPITAPH
+
+A lovely young lady I mourn in my rhymes:
+She was pleasant, good-natured, and civil sometimes.
+Her figure was good: she had very fine eyes,
+And her talk was a mixture of foolish and wise.
+Her adorers were many, and one of them said,
+"She waltzed rather well!  It's a pity she's dead!"
+
+George John Cayley [ ? ]
+
+
+ON THE ARISTOCRACY OF HARVARD
+
+And this is good old Boston,
+The home of the bean and the cod,
+Where the Lowells talk to the Cabots
+And the Cabots talk only to God. 
+
+John Collins Bossidy [1860-1928]
+
+
+ON THE DEMOCRACY OF YALE
+
+Here's to the town of New Haven,
+The home of the Truth and the Light,
+Where God talks to Jones in the very same tones
+That He uses with Hadley and Dwight!
+
+Frederick Scheetz Jones [1862-
+
+
+A GENERAL SUMMARY
+
+We are very slightly changed
+From the semi-apes who ranged
+India's prehistoric clay;
+Whoso drew the longest bow,
+Ran his brother down, you know,
+As we run men down to-day.
+"Dowb," the first of all his race,
+Met the Mammoth face to face
+On the lake or in the cave,
+Stole the steadiest canoe,
+Ate the quarry others slew,
+Died - and took the finest grave.
+
+When they scratched the reindeer-bone,
+Someone made the sketch his own,
+Filched it from the artist - then,
+Even in those early days,
+Won a simple Viceroy's praise
+Through the toil of other men.
+Ere they hewed the Sphinx's visage,
+Favoritism governed kissage,
+Even as it does in this age.
+
+Who shall doubt "the secret hid
+Under Cheops' pyramid"
+Was that the contractor did
+Cheops out of several millions?
+Or that Joseph's sudden rise
+To Comptroller of Supplies
+Was a fraud of monstrous size
+On King Pharaoh's swart Civilians?
+
+Thus, the artless songs I sing
+Do not deal with anything
+New or never said before.
+As it was in the beginning,
+Is to-day official sinning,
+And shall be for evermore!
+
+Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MIMICS
+
+
+
+
+
+
+AN OMAR FOR LADIES
+
+I
+One for her Club and her own Latch-key fights,
+Another wastes in Study her good Nights.
+Ah, take the Clothes and let the Culture go,
+Nor heed the grumble of the Women's Rights!
+
+Look at the Shop-girl all about us - "Lo,
+The Wages of a month," she says, "I blow
+Into a Hat, and when my hair is waved,
+Doubtless my Friend will take me to the Show."
+
+And she who saved her coin for Flannels red, 
+And she who caught Pneumonia instead,
+Will both be Underground in Fifty Years,
+And Prudence pays no Premium to the dead.
+
+Th' exclusive Style you set your heart upon
+Gets to the Bargain counters - and anon,
+Like monograms on a Saleslady's tie,
+Cheers but a moment - soon for you 'tis gone.
+
+Think, in the sad Four Hundred's gilded halls,
+Whose endless Leisure ev'n themselves appalls,
+How Ping-pong raged so high - then faded out
+To those far Suburbs that still chase its Balls.
+
+They say Sixth Avenue and the Bowery keep
+The dernier cri that once was far from cheap;
+Green veils, one season chic - Department stores
+Mark down in vain - no profit shall they reap.
+
+II
+I sometimes think that never lasts so long
+The Style as when it starts a bit too strong;
+That all the Pompadours the parterre boasts
+Some Chorus-girl began, with Dance and Song.
+
+And this Revival of the Chignon low
+That fills the most of us with helpless Woe,
+Ah, criticise it Softly! for who knows
+What long-necked Peeress had to wear it so!
+
+Ah, my beloved, try each Style you meet;
+To-day brooks no loose ends, you must be neat.
+Tomorrow! why tomorrow you may be
+Wearing it down your back like Marguerite!
+
+For some we once admired, the Very Best
+That ever a French hand-boned Corset prest,
+Wore what they used to call Prunella Boots,
+And put on Nightcaps ere they went to rest.
+
+And we that now make fun of Waterfalls
+They wore, and whom their Crinoline appalls,
+Ourselves shall from old dusty Fashion plates
+Assist our Children in their Costume balls.
+
+Ah, make the most of what we yet may wear,
+Before we grow so old that we don't care!
+Before we have our Hats made all alike,
+Sans Plumes, sans Wings, sans Chiffon, and - sans Hair!
+
+III
+Alike to her who Dines both Loud and Long,
+Or her who Banting shuns the Dinner-gong,
+Some Doctor from his Office chair will shout,
+"It makes no Difference - both of you are Wrong!"
+
+Why, all the Health-Reformers who discussed
+High Heels and Corsets learnedly are thrust
+Square-toed and Waistless forth; their Duds are scorned,
+And Venus might as well have been a Bust.
+
+Myself when slim did eagerly frequent
+Delsarte and Ling, and heard great Argument
+Of muscles trained to Hold me up, but still
+Spent on my Modiste what I'd always spent!
+
+With walking Clubs I did the best I could;
+With my own Feet I tramped my Ten Miles, good;
+And this was All that I got out of it -
+I ate much more for Dinner than I should.
+
+   .   .   .   .   .   .
+
+And fear not lest your Rheumatism seize
+The Joy of Life from other people's Sprees;
+The Art will not have Perished - au contraire,
+Posterity will practise it with Ease!
+
+When you and I have ceased Champagne to Sup,
+Be sure there will be More to Keep it Up;
+And while we pat Old Tabby by the fire,
+Full many a Girl will lead her Brindled Pup.
+
+Josephine Daskam Bacon [1876-
+
+
+"WHEN LOVELY WOMAN"
+After Goldsmith
+
+When lovely woman wants a favor,
+And finds, too late, that man won't bend,
+What earthly circumstance can save her
+From disappointment in the end?
+
+The only way to bring him over,
+The last experiment to try,
+Whether a husband or a lover,
+If he have feeling is - to cry.
+
+Phoebe Cary [1824-1871]
+
+
+FRAGMENT IN 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 holds 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 those trees began to grow;
+But still they grew, and grew, and grew,
+As if they'd nothing else to do,
+But ever must be growing.
+
+The impulses of air and sky
+Have reared 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.
+
+Fixed are their feet in solid earth
+Where winds can never blow;
+But visitings of deeper birth
+Have reached their roots below.
+For they have gained 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-bells are his playfellows,
+That dance upon their slender stem.
+
+And I have said, my little Will,
+Why should he not 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.
+
+Catherine M. Fanshawe [1765-1834]
+
+
+ONLY SEVEN
+After Wordsworth
+
+I marvelled why a simple child,
+That lightly draws its breath,
+Should utter groans so very wild,
+And look as pale as death.
+
+Adopting a parental tone,
+I asked her why she cried; 
+The damsel answered with a groan,
+"I've got a pain inside!
+
+"I thought it would have sent me mad
+Last night about eleven."
+Said I, "What is it makes you bad?
+How many apples have you had?"
+She answered, "Only seven!"
+
+"And are you sure you took no more,
+My little maid?" quoth I;
+"Oh, please, sir, mother gave me four,
+But they were in a pie!"
+
+"If that's the case," I stammered out,
+"Of course you've had eleven."
+The maiden answered with a pout,
+"I ain't had more nor seven!"
+
+I wondered hugely what she meant,
+And said, "I'm bad at riddles;
+But I know where little girls are sent
+For telling taradiddles.
+
+"Now, if you don't reform," said I,
+"You'll never go to heaven."
+But all in vain; each time I try,
+That little idiot makes reply,
+"I ain't had more nor seven!"
+
+POSTSCRIPT:
+To borrow Wordsworth's name was wrong,
+Or slightly misapplied;
+And so I'd better call my song
+"Lines after Ache-inside."
+
+Henry Sambrooke Leigh [1837-1883]
+
+
+LUCY LAKE
+After Wordsworth
+
+Poor Lucy Lake was overgrown,
+But somewhat underbrained.
+She did not know enough, I own,
+To go in when it rained.
+
+Yet Lucy was constrained to go;
+Green bedding, - you infer.
+Few people knew she died, but oh,
+The difference to her!
+
+Newton Mackintosh [1858-
+
+
+JANE SMITH
+After Wordsworth
+
+I journeyed, on a winter's day,
+Across the lonely wold;
+No bird did sing upon the spray,
+And it was very cold.
+
+I had a coach with horses four,
+Three white (though one was black),
+And on they went the common o'er,
+Nor swiftness did they lack.
+
+A little girl ran by my side,
+And she was pinched and thin.
+"Oh, please, sir, do give me a ride!
+I'm fetching mother's gin."
+
+"Enter my coach, sweet child," said I,
+"For you shall ride with me;
+And I will get you your supply
+Of mother's eau-de-vie."
+
+The publican was stern and cold,
+And said: "Her mother's score
+Is writ, as you shall soon behold,
+Behind the bar-room door!"
+
+I blotted out the score with tears,
+And paid the money down;
+And took the maid of thirteen years
+Back to her mother's town.
+
+And though the past with surges wild
+Fond memories may sever,
+The vision of that happy child
+Will leave my spirits never!
+
+Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936]
+
+
+FATHER WILLIAM
+From "Alice in Wonderland"
+After Southey
+
+"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
+"And your hair has become very white;
+And yet you incessantly stand on your head -
+Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
+
+"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
+"I feared it might injure the brain;
+But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
+Why, I do it again and again."
+
+"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
+And have grown most uncommonly fat;
+Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door -
+Pray, what is the reason of that?"
+
+"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his gray locks,
+"I kept all my limbs very supple
+By the use of this ointment - one shilling the box -
+Allow me to sell you a couple?"
+
+"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
+For anything tougher than suet;
+Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak -
+Pray, how did you manage to do it?"
+
+"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
+And argued each case with my wife;
+And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,
+Has lasted the rest of my life."
+
+"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
+That your eye was as steady as ever;
+Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose -
+What made you so awfully clever?"
+
+"I have answered three questions and that is enough,"
+Said his father; "don't give yourself airs!
+Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
+Be off, or I'll kick you downstairs!"
+
+Lewis Carroll [1832-1898]
+
+
+THE NEW ARRIVAL
+After Campbell
+
+There came to port last Sunday night
+The queerest little craft, 
+Without an inch of rigging on;
+I looked and looked - and laughed!
+It seemed so curious that she
+Should cross the Unknown water,
+And moor herself within my room -
+My daughter! O, my daughter!
+
+Yet by these presents witness all
+She's welcome fifty times,
+And comes consigned in hope and love -
+And common-metre rhymes.
+She has no manifest but this;
+No flag floats o'er the water;
+She's too new for the British Lloyds -
+My daughter! O, my daughter!
+
+Ring out, wild bells - and tame ones too;
+Ring out the lover's moon.
+Ring in the little worsted socks,
+Ring in the bib and spoon.
+Ring out the muse, ring in the nurse,
+Ring in the milk and water.
+Away with paper, pen, and ink -
+My daughter! O, my daughter!
+
+George Washington Cable [1844-1925]
+
+
+DISASTER
+After Moore
+
+'Twas ever thus from childhood's hour
+My fondest hopes would not decay:
+I never loved a tree or flower
+Which was the first to fade away!
+The garden, where I used to delve
+Short-frocked, still yields me pinks in plenty;
+The pear-tree that I climbed at twelve,
+I see still blossoming, at twenty.
+
+I never nursed a dear gazelle.
+But I was given a paroquet -
+How I did nurse him if unwell!
+He's imbecile, but lingers yet.
+He's green, with an enchanting tuft;
+He melts me with his small black eye:
+He'd look inimitable stuffed,
+And knows it - but he will not die!
+
+I had a kitten - I was rich
+In pets - but all too soon my kitten
+Became a full-sized cat, by which
+I've more than once been scratched and bitten;
+And when for sleep her limbs she curled
+One day beside her untouched plateful,
+And glided calmly from the world,
+I freely own that I was grateful.
+
+And then I bought a dog - a queen!
+Ah, Tiny, dear departing pug!
+She lives, but she is past sixteen,
+And scarce can crawl across the rug.
+I loved her beautiful and kind;
+Delighted in her pert Bow-wow:
+But now she snaps if you don't mind;
+'Twere lunacy to love her now.
+
+I used to think, should e'er mishap
+Betide my crumple-visaged Ti,
+In shape of prowling thief, or trap,
+Or coarse bull-terrier - I should die.
+But ah! disasters have their use;
+And life might e'en be too sunshiny:
+Nor would I make myself a goose,
+If some big dog should swallow Tiny.
+
+Charles Stuart Calverley [1831-1884]
+
+
+'TWAS EVER THUS
+After Moore
+
+I never reared a young gazelle,
+(Because, you see, I never tried);
+But had it known and loved me well,
+No doubt the creature would have died.
+My rich and aged Uncle John
+Has known me long and loves me well
+But still persists in living on -
+I would he were a young gazelle.
+
+I never loved a tree or flower;
+But, if I had, I beg to say
+The blight, the wind, the sun, or shower
+Would soon have withered it away.
+I've dearly loved my Uncle John,
+From childhood to the present hour,
+And yet he will go living on -
+I would he were a tree or flower!
+
+Henry Sambrooke Leigh [1837-1883]
+
+
+A GRIEVANCE
+After Byron
+
+Dear Mr. Editor: I wish to say -
+If you will not be angry at my, writing it -
+But I've been used, since childhood's happy day,
+When I have thought of something, to inditing it;
+I seldom think of things; and, by the way,
+Although this meter may not be exciting, it
+Enables one to be extremely terse, 
+Which is not what one always is in verse.
+
+I used to know a man, - such things befall
+The observant wayfarer through Fate's domain -
+He was a man, take him for all in all,
+We shall not look upon his like again;
+I know that statement's not original;
+What statement is, since Shakespeare? or, since Cain,
+What murder?  I believe 'twas Shakespeare said it, or
+Perhaps it may have been your Fighting Editor.
+
+Though why an Editor should fight, or why
+A Fighter should abase himself to edit,
+Are problems far too difficult and high
+For me to solve with any sort of credit.
+Some greatly more accomplished man than I
+Must tackle them: let's say then Shakespeare said it;
+And, if he did not, Lewis Morris may
+(Or even if he did).  Some other day,
+
+When I have nothing pressing to impart,
+I should not mind dilating on this matter.
+I feel its import both in head and heart,
+And always did, - especially the latter.
+I could discuss it in the busy mart
+Or on the lonely housetop; hold! this chatter
+Diverts me from my purpose.  To the point:
+The time, as Hamlet said, is out of joint,
+
+And perhaps I was born to set it right, -
+A fact I greet with perfect equanimity.
+I do not put it down to "cursed spite,"
+I don't see any cause for cursing in it.  I
+Have always taken very great delight
+In such pursuits since first I read divinity.
+Whoever will may write a nation's songs
+As long as I'm allowed to right its wrongs.
+
+What's Eton but a nursery of wrong-righters,
+A mighty mother of effective men;
+A training ground for amateur reciters,
+A sharpener of the sword as of the pen;
+A factory of orators and fighters,
+A forcing-house of genius?  Now and then
+The world at large shrinks back, abashed and beaten,
+Unable to endure the glare of Eton.
+
+I think I said I knew a man: what then?
+I don't suppose such knowledge is forbid.
+We nearly all do, more or less, know men, -
+Or think we do; nor will a man get rid
+Of that delusion while he wields a pen.
+But who this man was, what, if aught, he did,
+Nor why I mentioned him, I do not know,
+Nor what I "wished to say" a while ago.
+
+James Kenneth Stephen [1859-1892]
+
+
+"NOT A SOU HAD HE GOT"
+After Charles Wolfe
+
+Not a sou had he got - not a guinea or note -
+And he looked confoundedly flurried,
+As he bolted away without paying his shot,
+And the landlady after him hurried.
+
+We saw him again at dead of night,
+When home from the club returning;
+We twigged the doctor beneath the light
+Of the gas-lamp brilliantly burning.
+
+All bare and exposed to the midnight dews,
+Reclined in a gutter we found him;
+And he looked like a gentleman taking a snooze
+With his Marshall cloak around him.
+
+"The doctor's as drunk as the devil," we said,
+And we managed a shutter to borrow;
+We raised him; and sighed at the thought that his head
+Would consumedly ache on the morrow.
+
+We bore him home, and we put him to bed,
+And we told his wife and his daughter
+To give him next morning a couple of red-
+Herrings, with soda-water.
+
+Loudly they talked of his money that's gone,
+And his lady began to upbraid him;
+But little he recked, so they let him snore on
+'Neath the counterpane, just as we laid him.
+
+We tucked him in, and had hardly done,
+When, beneath the window calling,
+We heard the rough voice of a son of a gun
+Of a watchman "One o'clock!" bawling.
+
+Slowly and sadly we all walked down
+From his room on the uppermost story;
+A rushlight we placed on the cold hearth-stone,
+And we left him alone in his glory.
+
+Richard Harris Barham [1788-1845]
+
+
+THE WHITING AND THE SNAIL
+From "Alice in Wonderland"
+After Mary Howitt
+
+"Will you walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail,
+"There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail,
+See bow eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!
+They are waiting on the shingle - will you come and join the dance? 
+Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?
+Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?
+
+"You can really have no notion how delightful it will be
+When they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea!"
+But the snail replied, "Too far, too far!" and gave a look askance -
+Said he thanked the whiting kindly, but he would not join the dance.
+Would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join the dance.
+Would not, could not, would not, could not, could not join the dance.
+
+"What matters it how far we go?" his scaly friend replied.
+"There is another shore, you know, upon the other side.
+The further off from England the nearer is to France -
+Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance.
+Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?
+Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?"
+
+Lewis Carroll [1832-1898]
+
+
+THE RECOGNITION
+After Tennyson
+
+Home they brought her sailor son,
+Grown a man across the sea,
+Tall and broad and black of beard,
+And hoarse of voice as man may be.
+
+Hand to shake and mouth to kiss,
+Both he offered ere he spoke;
+But she said, "What man is this
+Comes to play a sorry joke?"
+
+Then they praised him - called him "smart,"
+"Tightest lad that ever stept;"
+But her son she did not know,
+And she neither smiled nor wept.
+
+Rose, a nurse of ninety years,
+Set a pigeon-pie in sight;
+She saw him eat: - "'Tis he! 'tis he!"
+She knew him - by his appetite!
+
+Frederick William Sawyer [1810-1875]
+
+
+THE HIGHER PANTHEISM IN A NUTSHELL
+After Tennyson
+
+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.
+
+Two and two may be four: but four and four are not eight;
+Fate and God may be twain: but God is the same thing as fate.
+
+Ask a man what he thinks, and get from a man what he feels;
+God, once caught in the fact, shows you a fair pair of heels.
+
+Body and spirit are twins: God only knows which is which;
+The soul squats down in the flesh, like a tinker drunk in a ditch.
+
+One and two are not one: but one and nothing is two;
+Truth can hardly be false, if falsehood cannot be true.
+
+Once the mastodon was: pterodactyls were common as cocks;
+Then the mammoth was God; now is He a prize ox.
+
+Parallels all things are: yet many of these are askew.
+You are certainly I: but certainly I am not you.
+
+Springs the rock from the plain, shoots the stream from the rock;
+Cocks exist for the hen: but hens exist for the cock.
+
+God, whom we see not, is: and God, who is not, we see;
+Fiddle, we know, is diddle; and diddle, we take it, is dee.
+
+Algernon Charles Swinburne [1837-1909]
+
+
+THE WILLOW-TREE
+After Hood
+
+Long by the willow-trees
+Vainly they sought her,
+Wild rang the mother's screams
+O'er the gray water:
+"Where is my lovely one?
+Where is my daughter?
+
+"Rouse thee, Sir Constable -
+Rouse thee and look;
+Fisherman, bring your net,
+Boatman, your hook.
+Beat in the lily-beds,
+Dive in the brook!"
+
+Vainly the constable
+Shouted and called her;
+Vainly the fisherman
+Beat the green alder;
+Vainly he flung the net,
+Never it hauled her!
+
+Mother beside the fire
+Sat, her nightcap in;
+Father, in easy chair,
+Gloomily napping,
+When at the window-sill
+Came a light tapping!
+
+And a pale countenance
+Looked through the casement.
+Loud beat the mother's heart,
+Sick with amazement,
+And at the vision which
+Came to surprise her,
+Shrieked in an agony -
+"Lor'! it's Elizar!"
+
+Yes, 'twas Elizabeth -
+Yes, 'twas their girl;
+Pale was her cheek, and her
+Hair out of curl.
+"Mother," the loving one,
+Blushing exclaimed,
+"Let not your innocent
+Lizzy be blamed.
+
+"Yesterday, going to Aunt
+Jones's to tea,
+Mother, dear mother, I
+Forgot the door-key!
+And as the night was cold
+And the way steep,
+Mrs. Jones kept me to
+Breakfast and sleep."
+
+Whether her Pa and Ma
+Fully believed her,
+That we shall never know,
+Stern they received her;
+And for the work of that
+Cruel, though short, night
+Sent her to bed without
+Tea for a fortnight.
+
+MORAL
+Hey diddle diddlety,
+Cat and the fiddlety,
+Maidens of England, take caution by she!
+Let love and suicide
+Never tempt you aside,
+And always remember to take the door-key.
+
+William Makepeace Thackeray [1811-1863]
+
+
+POETS AND LINNETS
+After Robert Browning
+
+Where'er there's a thistle to feed a linnet
+And linnets are plenty, thistles rife -
+Or an acorn-cup to catch dew-drops in it
+There's ample promise of further life.
+Now, mark how we begin it.
+
+For linnets will follow, if linnets are minded,
+As blows the white-feather parachute;
+And ships will reel by the tempest blinded -
+Aye, ships and shiploads of men to boot!
+How deep whole fleets you'll find hid.
+
+And we blow the thistle-down hither and thither
+Forgetful of linnets, and men, and God.
+The dew! for its want an oak will wither -
+By the dull hoof into the dust is trod,
+And then who strikes the cither?
+
+But thistles were only for donkeys intended,
+And that donkeys are common enough is clear,
+And that drop! what a vessel it might have befriended,
+Does it add any flavor to Glugabib's beer?
+Well, there's my musing ended.
+
+Tom Hood [1835-1874]
+
+
+THE JAM-POT
+
+The Jam-pot - tender thought!
+I grabbed it - so did you.
+"What wonder while we fought
+Together that it flew
+In shivers?" you retort.
+
+You should have loosed your hold
+One moment - checked your fist.
+But, as it was, too bold 
+You grappled and you missed.
+More plainly - you were sold.
+
+"Well, neither of us shared
+ The dainty."  That your plea?
+"Well, neither of us cared,"
+I answer. . . . "Let me see.
+How have your trousers fared?"
+
+Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936]
+
+
+BALLAD
+After William Morris
+
+Part I 
+The auld wife sat at her ivied door,
+(Butler and eggs and a pound of cheese)
+A thing she had frequently done before;
+And her spectacles lay on her aproned knees.
+
+The piper he piped on the hill-top high,
+(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese)
+Till the cow said "I die," and the goose asked "Why?"
+And the dog said nothing, but searched for fleas.
+
+The farmer he strode through the square farmyard;
+(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese)
+His last brew of ale was a trifle hard -
+The connection of which with the plot one sees.
+
+The farmer's daughter hath frank blue eyes;
+(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese)
+She hears the rooks caw in the windy skies,
+As she sits at her lattice and shells her peas.
+
+The farmer's daughter hath ripe red lips;
+(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese)
+If you try to approach her, away she skips
+Over tables and chairs with apparent ease.
+
+The farmer's daughter hath soft brown hair;
+(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese)
+And I met with a ballad, I can't say where,
+Which wholly consisted of lines like these.
+
+Part II 
+She sat, with her hands 'neath her dimpled cheeks,
+(Butler and eggs and a pound of cheese)
+And spake not a word.  While a lady speaks
+There is hope, but she didn't even sneeze.
+
+She sat, with her hands 'neath her crimson cheeks,
+(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese)
+She gave up mending her father's breeks,
+And let the cat roll in her new chemise.
+
+She sat, with her hands 'neath her burning cheeks,
+(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese)
+And gazed at the piper for thirteen weeks;
+Then she followed him out o'er the misty leas.
+
+Her sheep followed her, as their tails did them.
+(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese)
+And this song is considered a perfect gem,
+And as to the meaning, it's what you please.
+
+Charles Stuart Calverley [1831-1884]
+
+
+THE POSTER-GIRL
+After Dante Gabriel Rossetti
+
+The blessed Poster-girl leaned out
+From a pinky-purple heaven;
+One eye was red and one was green;
+Her bang was cut uneven;
+She had three fingers on her hand,
+And the hairs on her head were seven.
+
+Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,
+No sunflowers did adorn,
+But a heavy Turkish portiere
+Was very neatly worn;
+And the hat that lay along her back
+Was yellow like canned corn.
+
+It was a kind of wobbly wave
+That she was standing on,
+And high aloft she flung a scarf
+That must have weighed a ton;
+And she was rather tall - at least
+She reached up to the sun.
+
+She curved and writhed, and then she said, 
+Less green of speech than blue:
+"Perhaps I am absurd - perhaps 
+I don't appeal to you;
+But my artistic worth depends 
+Upon the point of view."
+
+I saw her smile, although her eyes
+Were only smudgy smears;
+And then she swished her swirling arms,
+And wagged her gorgeous ears, 
+She sobbed a blue-and-green-checked sob,
+And wept some purple tears.
+
+Carolyn Wells [186? -
+
+
+AFTER DILETTANTE CONCETTI
+After Dante Gabriel Rossetti
+
+"Why do you wear your hair like a man,
+Sister Helen?
+This week is the third since you began."
+"I'm writing a ballad; be still if you can,
+Little brother.
+(O Mother Carey, mother!
+What chickens are these between sea and heaven?)"
+
+"But why does your figure appear so lean,
+Sister Helen?
+And why do you dress in sage, sage green?"
+"Children should never be heard, if seen,
+Little brother!
+(O Mother Carey, mother!
+What fowls are a-wing in the stormy heaven!)"
+
+"But why is your face so yellowy white,
+Sister Helen?
+And why are your skirts so funnily tight?"
+"Be quiet, you torment, or how can I write,
+Little brother?
+(O Mother Carey, mother!
+How gathers thy train to the sea from the heaven!)"
+
+"And who's Mother Carey, and what is her train,
+Sister Helen?
+And why do you call her again and again?"
+"You troublesome boy, why that's the refrain,
+Little brother.
+(O Mother Carey, mother!
+What work is toward in the startled heaven?)"
+
+"And what's a refrain?  What a curious word,
+Sister Helen!
+Is the ballad you're writing about a sea-bird?"
+"Not at all; why should it be?  Don't be absurd,
+Little brother.
+(O Mother Carey, mother!
+Thy brood flies lower as lowers the heaven.)"
+
+(A big brother speaketh:)
+
+"The refrain you've studied a meaning had,
+Sister Helen!
+It gave strange force to a weird ballad.
+But refrains have become a ridiculous 'fad',
+Little brother.
+And Mother Carey, mother,
+Has a bearing on nothing in earth or heaven.
+
+"But the finical fashion has had its day,
+Sister Helen.
+And let's try in the style of a different lay
+To bid it adieu in poetical way,
+Little brother.
+So, Mother Carey, mother!
+Collect your chickens and go to - heaven."
+
+(A pause.  Then the big brother singeth, accompanying himself
+  in a plaintive wise on the triangle:)
+
+"Look in my face.  My name is Used-to-was,
+I am also called Played-out and Done-to-death,
+And It-will-wash-no-more.  Awakeneth
+Slowly, but sure awakening it has,
+The common-sense of man; and I, alas!
+The ballad-burden trick, now known too well,
+Am turned to scorn, and grown contemptible -
+A too transparent artifice to pass.
+
+"What a cheap dodge I am!  The cats who dart
+Tin-kettled through the streets in wild surprise
+Assail judicious ears not otherwise;
+And yet no critics praise the urchin's 'art',
+Who to the wretched creature's caudal part
+Its foolish empty-jingling 'burden' ties."
+
+Henry Duff Traill [1842-1900]
+
+
+IF
+After Swinburne
+
+If life were never bitter,
+And love were always sweet,
+Then who would care to borrow
+A moral from to-morrow -
+If Thames would always glitter,
+And joy would ne'er retreat,
+If life were never bitter,
+And love were always sweet!
+
+If care were not the waiter
+Behind a fellow's chair,
+When easy-going sinners
+Sit down to Richmond dinners,
+And life's swift stream flows straighter,
+By Jove, it would be rare,
+If care were not the waiter
+Behind a fellow's chair.
+
+If wit were always radiant,
+And wine were always iced,
+And bores were kicked out straightway
+Through a convenient gateway;
+Then down the year's long gradient
+'Twere sad to be enticed,
+If wit were always radiant,
+And wine were always iced.
+
+Mortimer Collins [1827-1876]
+
+
+NEPHELIDIA
+After Swinburne
+
+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 the 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 throbs through 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 graveyard 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 blood-shed 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 kennel of kings.
+
+Algernon Charles Swinburne [1837-1909]
+
+
+COMMONPLACES
+After Heine
+
+Rain on the face of the sea,
+Rain on the sodden land,
+And the window-pane is blurred with rain
+As I watch it, pen in hand.
+
+Mist on the face of the sea,
+Mist on the sodden land,
+Filling the vales as daylight fails,
+And blotting the desolate sand.
+
+Voices from out of the mist,
+Calling to one another:
+"Hath love an end, thou more than friend,
+Thou dearer than ever brother?"
+
+Voices from out of the mist,
+Calling and passing away;
+But I cannot speak, for my voice is weak,
+And. . . . this is the end of my lay.
+
+Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936]
+
+
+THE PROMISSORY NOTE
+After Poe
+
+In the lonesome latter years
+(Fatal years!)
+To the dropping of my tears
+Danced the mad and mystic spheres
+In a rounded, reeling rune,
+'Neath the moon,
+To the dripping and the dropping of my tears.
+Ah, my soul is swathed in gloom,
+(Ulalume!)
+In a dim Titanic tomb,
+For my gaunt and gloomy soul
+Ponders o'er the penal scroll,
+O'er the parchment (not a rhyme),
+Out of place, - out of time, -
+I am shredded, shorn, unshifty,
+(Oh, the fifty!)
+And the days have passed, the three,
+Over me!
+And the debit and the credit are as one to him and me!
+
+'Twas the random runes I wrote
+At the bottom of the note,
+(Wrote and freely
+Gave to Greeley)
+In the middle of the night,
+In the mellow, moonless night,
+When the stars were out of sight,
+When my pulses, like a knell,
+(Israfel!)
+Danced with dim and dying fays,
+O'er the ruins of my days,
+O'er the dimeless, timeless days,
+When the fifty, drawn at thirty,
+Seeming thrifty, yet the dirty
+Lucre of the market, was the most that I could raise!
+
+Fiends controlled it,
+(Let him hold it!)
+Devils held me for the inkstand and the pen;
+Now the days of grace are o'er,
+(Ah, Lenore!)
+I am but as other men;
+What is time, time, time,
+To my rare and runic rhyme,
+To my random, reeling rhyme,
+By the sands along the shore,
+Where the tempest whispers, "Pay him!" and I answer,
+"Nevermore!"
+
+Bayard Taylor [1825-1878]
+
+
+MRS. JUDGE JENKINS
+Being The Only Genuine Sequel To "Maud Muller"
+After Whittier
+
+Maud Muller all that summer day
+Raked the meadow sweet with hay;
+
+Yet, looking down the distant lane,
+She hoped the Judge would come again.
+
+But when he came, with smile and bow,
+Maud only blushed, and stammered, "Ha-ow?"
+
+And spoke of her "pa," and wondered whether
+He'd give consent they should wed together.
+
+Old Muller burst in tears, and then
+Begged that the Judge would lend him "ten";
+
+For trade was dull and wages low,
+And the "craps," this year, were somewhat slow.
+
+And ere the languid summer died,
+Sweet Maud became the Judge's bride.
+
+But on the day that they were mated,
+Maud's brother Bob was intoxicated;
+
+And Maud's relations, twelve in all,
+Were very drunk at the Judge's hall;
+
+And when the summer came again,
+The young bride bore him babies twain;
+
+And the Judge was blest, but thought it strange
+That bearing children made such a change.
+
+For Maud grew broad, and red, and stout,
+And the waist that his arm once clasped about
+
+Was more than he now could span; and he
+Sighed as he pondered, ruefully,
+
+How that which in Maud was native grace
+In Mrs. Jenkins was out of place;
+
+And thought of the twins, and wished that they
+Looked less like the men who raked the hay
+
+On Muller's farm, and dreamed with pain
+Of the day he wandered down the lane.
+
+And, looking down that dreary track,
+He half regretted that he came back.
+
+For, had he waited, he might have wed
+Some maiden fair and thoroughbred;
+
+For there be women as fair as she,
+Whose verbs and nouns do more agree. 
+
+Alas for maiden! alas for judge!
+And the sentimental, - that's one-half "fudge";
+
+For Maud soon thought the Judge a bore,
+With all his learning and all his lore;
+
+And the Judge would have bartered Maud's fair face
+For more refinement and social grace.
+
+If, of all words of tongue and pen,
+The saddest are, "It might have been,"
+
+More sad are these we daily see:
+"It is, but hadn't ought to be."
+
+Bret Harte [1839-1902]
+
+
+THE MODERN HIAWATHA
+From "The Song of Milkanwatha"
+
+He killed the noble Mudjokivis,
+With the skin he made him mittens,
+Made them with the fur side inside,
+Made them with the skin side outside,
+He, to get the warm side inside,
+Put the inside skin side outside:
+He, to get the cold side outside,
+Put the warm side fur side inside:
+That's why he put the fur side inside,
+Why he put the skin side outside,
+Why he turned them inside outside.
+
+George A. Strong [1832-1912]
+
+
+HOW OFTEN
+After Longfellow
+
+They stood on the bridge at midnight,
+In a park not far from the town;
+They stood on the bridge at midnight,
+Because they didn't sit down.
+
+The moon rose o'er the city,
+Behind the dark church spire;
+The moon rose o'er the city,
+And kept on rising higher.
+
+How often, oh! how often
+They whispered words so soft;
+How often, oh! how often,
+How often, oh! how oft.
+
+Ben King [1857-1894]
+
+
+"IF I SHOULD DIE TO-NIGHT"
+After Arabella Eugenia Smith
+
+If I should die to-night
+And you should come to my cold corpse and say,
+Weeping and heartsick o'er my lifeless clay -
+If I should die to-night,
+And you should come in deepest grief and woe -
+And say: "Here's that ten dollars that I owe,"
+I might arise in my large white cravat
+And say, "What's that?"
+
+If I should die to-night
+And you should come to my cold corpse and, kneel,
+Clasping my bier to show the grief you feel,
+I say, if I should die to-night
+And you should come to me, and there and then
+Just even hint at paying me that ten,
+I might arise the while,
+But I'd drop dead again.
+
+Ben King [1857-1894]
+
+
+SINCERE FLATTERY
+Of W. W. (Americanus)
+
+The clear cool note of the cuckoo which has ousted the legitimate
+  nest-holder,
+The whistle of the railway guard dispatching the train to the
+  inevitable collision,
+The maiden's monosyllabic reply to a polysyllabic proposal,
+The fundamental note of the last trump, which is presumably D natural;
+All of these are sounds to rejoice in, yea, to let your very ribs
+  re-echo with:
+But better than all of them is the absolutely last chord of the
+  apparently inexhaustible pianoforte player.
+
+James Kenneth Stephen [1859-1892]
+
+
+CULTURE IN THE SLUMS
+Inscribed To An Intense Poet
+
+I.  RONDEAU
+"O crikey, Bill!" she ses to me, she ses.
+"Look sharp," ses she, "with them there sossiges.
+Yea! sharp with them there bags of mysteree!
+For lo!" she ses, "for lo! old pal," ses she,
+"I'm blooming peckish, neither more nor less."
+Was it not prime - I leave you all to guess
+How prime! - to have a Jude in love's distress
+Come spooning round, and murmuring balmilee,
+"O crikey, Bill!"
+
+For in such rorty wise doth Love express
+His blooming views, and asks for your address,
+And makes it right, and does the gay and free.
+I kissed her - I did so!  And her and me
+Was pals.  And if that ain't good business,
+"O crikey, Bill!"
+
+II.  VILLANELLE
+
+Now ain't they utterly too-too
+(She ses, my Missus mine, ses she),
+Them flymy little bits of Blue.
+
+Joe, just you kool 'em - nice and skew
+Upon our old meogginee,
+Now ain't they utterly too-too?
+
+They're better than a pot'n' a screw,
+They're equal to a Sunday spree,
+Them flymy little bits of Blue!
+
+Suppose I put 'em up the flue,
+And booze the profits, Joe?  Not me.
+Now ain't they utterly too-too?
+
+I do the 'Igh Art fake, I do.
+Joe, I'm consummate; and I see
+Them flymy little bits of Blue.
+
+Which, Joe, is why I ses ter you -
+Aesthetic-like, and limp, and free -
+Now ain't they utterly too-too,
+Them flymy little bits of Blue?
+
+William Ernest Henley [1849-1903]
+
+
+THE POETS AT TEA
+
+I. - (Macaulay)
+Pour, varlet, pour the water,
+The water steaming hot!
+A spoonful for each man of us,
+Another for the pot!
+We shall not drink from amber,
+No Capuan slave shall mix
+For us the snows of Athos
+With port at thirty-six;
+Whiter than snow the crystals
+Grown sweet 'neath tropic fires,
+More rich the herb of China's field,
+The pasture-lands more fragrance yield;
+Forever let Britannia wield
+The teapot of her sires!
+
+II. - (Tennyson)
+I think that I am drawing to an end:
+For on a sudden came a gasp for breath,
+And stretching of the hands, and blinded eyes,
+And a, great darkness falling on my soul.
+O Hallelujah! . . . Kindly pass the milk.
+
+III. - (Swinburne)
+As the sin that was sweet in the sinning
+Is foul in the ending thereof,
+As the heat of the summer's beginning
+Is past in the winter of love:
+O purity, painful and pleading!
+O coldness, ineffably gray!
+O hear us, our handmaid unheeding,
+And take it away!
+
+IV. - (Cowper)
+The cosy fire is bright and gay,
+The merry kettle boils away
+And hums a cheerful song.
+I sing the saucer and the cup;
+Pray, Mary, fill the teapot up,
+And do not make it strong.
+
+V. - (Browning)
+Tut!  Bah!  We take as another case -
+Pass the pills on the window-sill; notice the capsule
+(A sick man's fancy, no doubt, but I place
+Reliance on trade-marks, Sir) - so perhaps you'll
+Excuse the digression - this cup which I hold
+Light-poised - Bah, it's spilt in the bed - well, let's on go -
+Hold Bohea and sugar, Sir; if you were told
+The sugar was salt, would the Bohea be Congo?
+
+VI. - (Wordsworth)
+"Come, little cottage girl, you seem
+To want my cup of tea;
+And will you take a little cream?
+Now tell the truth to me."
+
+She had a rustic, woodland grin,
+Her cheek was soft as silk,
+And she replied, "Sir, please put in
+A little drop of milk."
+
+"Why, what put milk into your head?
+'Tis cream my cows supply;"
+And five times to the child I said,
+"Why, pig-head, tell me, why?"
+
+"You call me pig-head," she replied;
+"My proper name is Ruth.
+I called that milk" - she blushed with pride -
+"You bade me speak the truth."
+
+VII. - (Poe)
+Here's a mellow cup of tea - golden tea!
+What a world of rapturous thought its fragrance brings to me!
+Oh, from out the silver cells
+How it wells!
+How it smells!
+Keeping tune, tune, tune,
+To the tintinnabulation of the spoon.
+And the kettle on the fire
+Boils its spout off with desire,
+With a desperate desire
+And a crystalline endeavor
+Now, now to sit, or never,
+On the top of the pale-faced moon,
+But he always came home to tea, tea, tea, tea, tea,
+Tea to the n-th.
+
+VIII. - (Rossetti)
+The lilies lie in my lady's bower,
+(O 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
+(O weary mother, drive the cows to roost);
+She poured; I drank at her command;
+Drank deep, and now - you understand!
+(O weary mother, drive the cows to roost).
+
+IX. - (Burns)
+Weel, gin ye speir, I'm no inclined,
+Whusky or tay - to state my mind
+Fore ane or ither;
+For, gin I tak the first, I'm fou,
+And gin the next, I'm dull as you:
+Mix a' thegither.
+
+X. - (Walt Whitman)
+One cup for my self-hood,
+Many for you.  Allons, camerados, we will drink together,
+O hand-in-hand!  That tea-spoon, please, when you've done with it.
+What butter-colored hair you've got.  I don't want to be personal.
+All right, then, you needn't.  You're a stale-cadaver.
+Eighteen-pence if the bottles are returned.
+Allons, from all bat-eyed formulas.
+
+Barry Pain [1864-1928]
+
+
+WORDSWORTH
+
+Two voices are there: one is of the deep;
+It learns the storm cloud's thunderous melody,
+Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea,
+Now birdlike pipes, now closes soft in sleep;
+And one is of an old half-witted sheep
+Which bleats articulate monotony,
+And indicates that two and one are three,
+That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep:
+And, Wordsworth, both are thine: at certain times,
+Forth from the heart of thy melodious rhymes
+The form and pressure of high thoughts will burst;
+At other times-good Lord! I'd rather be
+Quite unacquainted with the A, B, C,
+Than write such hopeless rubbish as thy worst.
+
+James Kenneth Stephen [1859-1892]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg V4 The Home Book of Verse, by Burton Stevenson
+This ends Volume I of the two volume paper edition.
+
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