SONG Go and catch a falling star, Get with child a mandrake root; What wind Serves to advance an honest mind. If thou beest born to strange sights, Ride ten thousand days and nights, Till age snow white hairs on thee; Lives a woman true and fair. If thou find'st one, let me know; Though at next door we might meet. Yet she Will be False, ere I come, to two or three. John Donne. THE OUBIT Ir was an hairy oubit, sae proud he crept alang, A feckless hairy oubit, and merrily he sang: "My Minnie bade me bide at home until I won my wings, I shew her soon my soul's aboon the warks o' creeping things." Double Ballade of Primitive Man This feckless hairy oubit cam' hirpling by the linn, 331 A swirl o' wind cam' doun the glen, and blew that oubit in. Tak' warning then, young poets a', by this poor oubit's shame; Though Pegasus may nicher loud, keep Pegasus at hame. DOUBLE BALLADE OF PRIMITIVE MAN He lived in a cave by the seas, He lived upon oysters and foes, To prove he had never a pan, But he shaved with a shell when he chose, 'Twas the manner of Primitive Man. He worshipp'd the rain and the breeze, And the Dawn, and the Moon, and the trees He buried his dead with their toes Tucked-up, an original plan, Till their knees came right under their nose,— His communal wives, at his ease, He would curb with occasional blows But he sang in a strain that would scan, On the coasts that incessantly freeze, With his stones, and his bones, and his bows, On luxuriant tropical leas, Where the summer eternally glows, He is found, and his habits disclose (Let theology say what she can) That he lived in the long, long agos, 'Twas the manner of Primitive Man! From a status like that of the Crees When he rushed on the world and its woes,- But the mild anthropologist-he's Not recent inclined to suppose Flints Palæolithic like these, Quaternary bones such as those! In Rhinoceros, Mammoth and Co.'s First epoch the Human began Theologians all to expose, 'Tis the mission of Primitive Man. ENVOY Max, proudly your Aryans pose, But their rigs they undoubtedly ran, For, as every Darwinian knows, 'Twas the manner of Primitive Man! Andrew Lang. PHILLIS'S AGE How old may Phillis be, you ask, Whose beauty thus all hearts engages? To answer is no easy task: For she has really two ages. Phillis's Age Stiff in brocade, and pinch'd in stays, Paint, patches, jewels laid aside, 333 Matthew Prior. V CYNICISM GOOD AND BAD LUCK GOOD LUCK is the gayest of all gay girls; But Madame Bad Luck soberly comes Snatches of true-love songs she hums, And sits by your bed, and brings her knitting. BANGKOLIDYE "GIMME my scarlet tie," Says I. "Gimme my brownest boots and hat, Gimme a vest with a pattern fancy, Gimme a gel with some style, like Nancy, And then-well, it's gimes as I'll be at, Says I. "May miss it, but we'll try," Nancy ran like a frightened 'en Says I. Hup the steps of the bloomin' styeshun. John Hay. |