Part 186 (1/2)

What a beautiful p.u.s.s.y you are!”

p.u.s.s.y said to the Owl, ”You elegant fowl, How charmingly sweet you sing!

Oh, let us be married; too long we have tarried: But what shall we do for a ring?”

They sailed away for a year and a day, To the land where the bong-tree grows; And there in the wood a Piggy-wig stood, With a ring at the end of his nose, His nose, His nose, With a ring at the end of his nose.

”Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one s.h.i.+lling Your ring?” Said the Piggy, ”I will.”

So they took it away and were married next day By the Turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince and slices of quince, Which they ate with a runcible spoon; And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, They danced by the light of the moon, The moon, The moon, They danced by the light of the moon.

_Edward Lear._

MEXICAN SERENADE

When the little armadillo With his head upon his pillow Sweetly rests, And the parrakeet and lindo Flitting past my cabin window Seek their nests,--

When the mists of even settle Over Popocatapetl, Dropping dew,-- Like the condor, over yonder, Still I ponder, ever fonder, Dear, of You!

May no revolution shock you, May the earthquake gently rock you To repose, While the sentimental panthers Sniff the pollen-laden anthers Of the rose!

While the pelican is pining, While the moon is softly s.h.i.+ning On the stream, May the song that I am singing Send a tender cadence winging Through your dream!

I have just one wish to utter-- That you twinkle through your shutter Like a star, While, according to convention, I shall cas-u-ally mention My guitar.

Senorita Maraquita, Muy bonita, pobracita!-- Hear me weep!-- But the night is growing wetter, So I guess that you had better Go to sleep.

_Arthur Guiterman._

ORPHAN BORN

I am a lone, unfathered chick, Of artificial hatching, A pilgrim in a desert wild, By happier, mothered chicks reviled, From all relations.h.i.+ps exiled, To do my own lone scratching.

Fair science smiled upon my birth One raw and gusty morning; But ah, the sounds of barnyard mirth To lonely me have little worth; Alone am I in all the earth-- An orphan without borning.

Seek I my mother? I would find A heartless personator; A thing bra.s.s-feathered, man-designed, With steam-pipe arteries intermined, And pulseless cotton-batting lined-- A patent incubator.

It wearies me to think, you see-- Death would be better, rather-- Should downy chicks be hatched of me, By fate's most pitiless decree, My piping pullets still would be With never a grandfather.

And when to earth I bid adieu To seek a planet greater, I will not do as others do, Who fly to join the ancestral crew, For I will just be gathered to My incubator.

_Robert J. Burdette._

DIVIDED DESTINIES