Early Rising

The time for honest folks to be a-bed
Is in the morning, if I reason right;

And he who cannot keep his precious head
Upon his pillow till it's fairly light,
And so enjoy his forty morning winks,
Is up to knavery; or else he drinks!

Thompson, who sung about the "Seasons," said
It was a glorious thing to rise in season;
But then he said it-lying-in his bed,

At ten o'clock A.M.,-the very reason

He wrote so charmingly. The simple fact is
His preaching wasn't sanctioned by his practice.

'Tis, doubtless, well to be sometimes awake,—
Awake to duty, and awake to truth,-
But when, alas! a nice review we take

Of our best deeds and days, we find, in sooth,
The hours that leave the slightest cause to weep
Are those we passed in childhood or asleep!

'Tis beautiful to leave the world awhile

For the soft visions of the gentle night;
And free, at last, from mortal care or guile,
To live as only in the angel's sight,
In sleep's sweet realm so cosily shut in,
Where, at the worst, we only dream of sin!

So let us sleep, and give the Maker praise.
I like the lad who, when his father thought
To clip his morning nap by hackneyed phrase

Of vagrant worm by early songster caught,
Cried, "Served him right!-it's not at all surprising;
The worm was punished, sir, for early rising!"

John G. Saxe.

45

TO THE PLIOCENE SKULL

"SPEAK, O man less recent!

Fragmentary fossil!

Primal pioneer of pliocene formation,

Hid in lowest drifts below the earliest stratum
Of volcanic tufa!

"Older than the beasts, the oldest Palæotherium;
Older than the trees, the oldest Cryptogami;
Older than the hills, those infantile eruptions
Of earth's epidermis!

"Eo-Mio-Plio-whatsoe'er the 'cene' was

That those vacant sockets filled with awe and wonder,Whether shores Devonian or Silurian beaches,—

Tell us thy strange story!

"Or has the professor slightly antedated

By some thousand years thy advent on this planet.
Giving thee an air that's somewhat better fitted
For cold-blooded creatures?

"Wert thou true spectator of that mighty forest
When above thy head the stately Sigillaria
Reared its columned trunks in that remote and distant
Carboniferous epoch?

"Tell us of that scene-the dim and watery woodland, Songless, silent, hushed, with never bird or insect, Veiled with spreading fronds and screened with tall club

mosses,

Lycopodiacea,

"When beside thee walked the solemn Plesiosaurus,
And all around thee crept the festive Ichthyosaurus,
While from time to time above thee flew and circled
Cheerful Pterodactyls;-

Ode to Work in Springtime

"Tell us of thy food,-those half-marine refections,
Crinoids on the shell, and Brachipods au naturel,—
Cuttle-fish to which the pieuvre of Victor Hugo
Seems a periwinkle.

"Speak, thou awful vestige of the Earth's creation-
Solitary fragment of remains organic!

Tell the wondrous secret of thy past existence-
Speak! thou oldest primate!"

Even as I gazed, a thrill of the maxilla,
And a lateral movement of the condyloid process,
With post-pliocene sounds of healthy mastication,
Ground the teeth together.

And, from that imperfect dental exhibition,
Stained with expressed juices of the weed Nicotian,
Came these hollow accents, blent with softer murmurs
Of expectoration:

"Which my name is Bowers, and my crust was busted
Falling down a shaft in Calaveras county,
But I'd take it kindly if you'd send the pieces
Home to old Missouri!"

47

Bret Harte.

ODE TO WORK IN SPRINGTIME

Он, would that working I might shun,

From labour my connection sever,

That I might do a bit-or none
Whatever!

That I might wander over hills,
Establish friendship with a daisy,
O'er pretty things like daffodils

Go crazy!

That I might at the heavens gaze,
Concern myself with nothing weighty,
Loaf, at a stretch, for seven days-
Or eighty.

Why can't I cease a slave to be,
And taste existence beatific
On some fair island, hid in the
Pacific?

Instead of sitting at a desk

'Mid undone labours, grimly lurkingOh, say, what is there picturesque

In working?

But no!-to loaf were misery!—

I love to work! Hang isles of coral! (To end this otherwise would be

Immoral!)

OLD STUFF

Thomas R. Ybarra.

IF I go to see the play,

Of the story I am certain; Promptly it gets under way

With the lifting of the curtain. Builded all that's said and done On the ancient recipe

'Tis the same old Two and One: A and B in love with C.

If I read the latest book,
There's the mossy situation;
One may confidently look

For the trite triangulation.
Old as time, but ever new,
Seemingly, this tale of Three-
Same old yarn of One and Two:
A and C in love with B.

The Legend of Heinz Von Stein
If I cast my eyes around,

Far and near and middle distance,
Still the formula is found

In our everyday existence.
Everywhere I look I see-
Fact or fiction, life or play-
Still the little game of Three:
B and C in love with A.

While the ancient law fulfills,

Myriad moons shall wane and wax.
Jack must have his pair of Jills,
Jill must have her pair of Jacks.

Bert Leston Taylor.

49

TO MINERVA

My temples throb, my pulses boil,

I'm sick of Song and Ode and Ballad-
So Thyrsis, take the midnight oil,
And pour it on a lobster salad.

My brain is dull, my sight is foul,
I cannot write a verse, or read-
Then Pallas, take away thine Owl,
And let us have a Lark instead.

Thomas Hood.

THE LEGEND OF HEINZ VON STEIN

Our rode from his wild, dark castle
The terrible Heinz von Stein;

He came to the door of a tavern
And gazed on its swinging sign.

He sat himself down at a table,
And growled for a bottle of wine;
Up came with a flask and a corkscrew
A maiden of beauty divine.