Quoth: "What is our life but a dream of pride? Destruction stalks forth on every side, And if my wife should know! "What matters it all if I can maintain My right to reap and sow? To gather what I have planted in pain?" I passed next morning, and under the trees Amid rustle of leaves and hum of bees, 'Mid glint of flowers, yet brighter than hese, His look serene and bland. But what saw I in the shrubbery there, So dismally white and gaunt and bare, Three ghastly skeletons stood in a row, The soft breeze tilted them to and fro, "No berries here you snatch!" Three skeletons brought from a closet down, And the birds were all flown, far up and down The parson stood by his strawberry bed, The berries were large and ripe and red. 'Dear, your hoops have saved the berries," he said; "Buy new ones in the town." THE BALLAD OF A BUTCHER. It was a gruesome butcher, With countenance saturnine; He stood at the door of his little shop, It was the hour of nine. The children going by the school They loved to see the sausage machine The butcher he looked out and in, Then horribly he swore ; Next yawned, then, smiling, he licked his chops; "Now here's all these dear little children, Some on 'em might live to be sixty; Why shouldn't I save them the trouble to wunst, So he winked to the children and beckoned 'em in: "Oh, don't ye's want some candy? But ye see ye'll have to come into the shop, He 'ticed them into the little shop, The machine went round and round, DREAM OF A SPELLING BEE. PUNCH. Menageries where sleuth hounds caracole, Gaunt seneschals in crotchety cockades, Of madrepores in water-logged galoons. Flamboyant triptychs groined with gherkins green, BITUMEN. In the flush times, when oil wells were the theme To furnish funds, by him to be invested "The territory where that well and derrick are The drill will very shortly reach the bed rock, We paid our money and we took our stock, 'Twas not possessing riches great or small That fixed the due proportion each one bore. While some are like the cobbler in his stall Why need I here repeat the old, old story? And very likely knows how 'tis himself. And to the rest one then and there gave greeting: "We poor outsiders do not feel so sore (Although we're neither more nor less than human) At having sacrificed our little store, For you rich folks, who know so vastly more, POMP AND I. Pomp lies in one chair, I in another. There we lie blinkin' in the sun, What d' you 'spose we're thinkin' 'bout? I'm so glad I'm nothing but a cat. Fat and lazy all day long, Plenty to eat and can't do wrong. When it comes to the end of day All I can say is, I'm happy as a cat. 66 Happy as a clam," is nothin' to that. THE MONKEY TO THE POLYP. Evolved from thee, forsooth, thou thing! Thou pulpy nondescript, with no sure place In either kingdom. Who the faintest trace, Perceives of future power and Simian grace In thee, small polyp? Behold these limbs, so supple and so strong; These eyes, which keen intelligence express; This tail! Oh, may its shadow ne'er grow less In that humiliating base process ! The (so-called) wise affirm. Darwin forbear! The very thought Doth make all Simiada howl and hiss We that are ranked as gods and live in bliss Where India's temples rise. Give us the proof, ye scientists Bring on The fossil beast whose lineaments betray Transition's progress; then, perhaps, we may Believe the wild romance. But, now-nay, nay, 'Tis ducks we surely hear. Survival of the fittest! If, indeed, This doctrine be the true one, tell me why Yon ugly mandrill stalks beneath the sky, To frisk no more. |