Part 181 (2/2)

_Unknown._

WONDERS OF NATURE

Ah! who has seen the mailed lobster rise, Clap her broad wings, and, soaring, claim the skies?

When did the owl, descending from her bower, Crop, 'midst the fleecy flocks, the tender flower; Or the young heifer plunge, with pliant limb, In the salt wave, and, fish-like, try to swim?

The same with plants, potatoes 'tatoes breed, The costly cabbage springs from cabbage-seed; Lettuce to lettuce, leeks to leeks succeed; Nor e'er did cooling cuc.u.mbers presume To flower like myrtle, or like violets bloom.

_The Anti-Jacobin._

LINES BY AN OLD FOGY

I'm thankful that the sun and moon Are both hung up so high, That no presumptuous hand can stretch And pull them from the sky.

If they were not, I have no doubt But some reforming a.s.s Would recommend to take them down And light the world with gas.

_Unknown._

A COUNTRY SUMMER PASTORAL

As written by a learned scholar of the city from knowledge derived from etymological deductions rather than from actual experience.

I would flee from the city's rule and law, From its fas.h.i.+on and form cut loose, And go where the strawberry grows on its straw, And the gooseberry on its goose; Where the catnip tree is climbed by the cat As she crouches for her prey-- The guileless and unsuspecting rat On the rattan bush at play.

I will watch at ease for the saffron cow And the cowlet in their glee, As they leap in joy from bough to bough On the top of the cowslip tree; Where the musical partridge drums on his drum, And the dog devours the dogwood plum And the wood chuck chucks his wood, In the primitive solitude.

And then to the whitewashed dairy I'll turn, Where the dairymaid hastening hies, Her ruddy and golden-haired b.u.t.ter to churn From the milk of her b.u.t.terflies; And I'll rise at morn with the early bird, To the fragrant farm-yard pa.s.s, When the farmer turns his beautiful herd Of gra.s.shoppers out to gra.s.s.

_Unknown._

TURVEY TOP

'Twas after a supper of Norfolk brawn That into a doze I chanced to drop, And thence awoke in the grey of dawn, In the wonder-land of Turvey Top.

A land so strange I never had seen, And could not choose but look and laugh-- A land where the small the great includes, And the whole is less than the half!

A land where the circles were not lines Round central points, as schoolmen show, And the parallels met whenever they chose, And went playing at touch-and-go!

There--except that every round was square, And save that all the squares were rounds-- No surface had limits anywhere, So they never could beat the bounds.

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