WHEN good King Arthur ruled the land,
He was a goodly king:
He stole three pecks of barley meal,
To make a bag-pudding.
A bag-pudding the king did make,
And stuffed it well with plums;
And in it put great lumps of fat,
As big as my two thumbs.
The king and queen did eat thereof,
And noblemen beside;
And what they could not eat that night,
The queen next morning fried.
HYDER iddle diddle dell,
A yard of pudding is not an ell;
Not forgetting tweedle-dye,
A tailor's goose will never fly.
BRIGHT breaks the warrior o'er the ocean wave
Through realms that rove not, clouds that cannot save,
Sinks in the sunshine; dazzles o'er the tomb
And mocks the mutiny of Memory's gloom.
Oh! who can feel the crimson ecstasy
That soothes with bickering jar the Glorious Tree?
O'er the high rock the foam of gladness throws,
While star-beams lull Vesuvius to repose:
Girds the white spray, and in the blue lagoon,
Weeps like a walrus o'er the waning moon?
Who can declare?-not thou, pervading boy
Whom pibrochs pierce not, crystals cannot cloy;-
Not thou soft Architect of silvery gleams,
Whose soul would simmer in Hesperian streams,
Th' exhaustless fire-the bosom's azure bliss,
That hurtles, life-like, o'er a scene like this;-
Defies the distant agony of Day-
And sweeps o'er hecatombs-away! away!
Say shall Destruction's lava load the gale,
The furnace quiver and the mountain quail?
Say shall the son of Sympathy pretend
His cedar fragrance with our Chief's to blend?
There, where the gnarled monuments of sand
Howl their dark whirlwinds to the levin brand;
Conclusive tenderness; fraternal grog,
Tidy conjunction; adamantine bog,
Impetuous arrant toadstool; Thundering quince,
Repentant dog-star, inessential Prince,
Expound. Pre-Adamite evcatful gun,
Crush retribution, currant-jelly, pun,
Oh! eligible Darkness, fender, sting,
Heav'n-born Insanity, courageous thing.
Intending, bending, scouring, piercing all,
Death like pomatum, tea, and crabs must fall.
If we square a lump of pemmican
And cube a pot of tea,
Divide a musk ox by the span
From noon to half-past three;
If we calculate the Eskimo
By solar parallax,
Divide the sextant by a floe
And multiply the cracks
By nth-powered igloos, we may prove
All correlated facts.
THE Thingumbob sat at eventide,
On the shore of a shoreless sea,
Expecting an unexpected attack
From something it could not foresee.
A still calm rests on the angry waves,
The low wind whistles a mournful tune,
And the Thingumbob sighs to himself, "Alas,
I've had no supper now since noon."
Ан! who has seen the mailèd 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 cucumbers presume
To flower like myrtle, or like violets bloom.
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.
A Country Summer Pastoral
If they were not, I have no doubt
But some reforming ass
Would recommend to take them down
And light the world with gas.
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 fashion 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 butter to churn
From the milk of her butterflies;
And I'll rise at morn with the early bird,
To the fragrant farm-yard pass,
When the farmer turns his beautiful herd
Of grasshoppers out to grass.
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