The Book of Humorous Verse Part 86

And so when time has ebbed away, Like childish wreaths too lightly held, The song of immemorial eld Shall moan about the belted bay.

Where slant Orion slopes his star, To swelter in the rolling seas, Till slowly widening by degrees The grey climbs upward from afar.

And golden youth and pa.s.sion stray Along the ridges of the strand,-- Not far apart, but hand in hand,-- With all the darkness danced away!

_Thomas Hood, Jr._

"SONGS WITHOUT WORDS"

I cannot sing the old songs, Though well I know the tune, Familiar as a cradle-song With sleep-compelling croon; Yet though I'm filled with music As choirs of summer birds "I cannot sing the old songs"-- I do not know the words.

I start on "Hail Columbia,"

And get to "heav'n-born band,"

And there I strike an up-grade With neither steam nor sand; "Star Spangled Banner" downs me Right in my wildest screaming, I start all right, but dumbly come To voiceless wreck at "streaming."

So, when I sing the old songs, Don't murmur or complain If "Ti, diddy ah da, tum dum,"

Should fill the sweetest strain.

I love "Tolly um dum di do,"

And the "trilla-la yeep da" birds, But "I cannot sing the old songs"-- I do not know the words.

_Robert J. Burdette._

AT THE SIGN OF THE c.o.c.k

FRENCH STYLE, 1898

Being an Ode in further "Contribution to the Song of French History,"

dedicated, without malice or permission to Mr. George Meredith.

I

Rooster her sign, Rooster her pugnant note, she struts Evocative, amazon spurs ap.r.i.c.k at heel; Nid-nod the authentic stump Of the once ensanguined comb vermeil as wine; With conspuent doodle-doo Hails breach o' the hectic dawn of yon New Year, Last issue up to date Of quiverful Fate Evolved spontaneous; hails with tenant trump The spiriting prime o' the clashed carillon-peal; Ruffling her caudal plumes derisive of scuts; Inconscient how she stalks an immarcessibly absurd Bird.

II

Mark where her Equatorial Pioneer Delirant on the tramp goes littoralwise.

His Flag at furl, portmanteaued; drains to the dregs The penultimate brandy-bottle, coal-on-the-head-piece gift Of who avenged the Old Sea-Rover's smirch.

Marchant he treads the all-along of inarable drift On dubiously connivent legs, The facile prey of predatory flies; Panting for further; sworn to lurch Empirical on to the Menelik-buffered, enhavened blue, Rhyming--see Cantique I.--with doodle-doo.

III

Infuriate she kicked against Imperial fact; Vulnant she felt What pin-stab should have stained Another's pelt Puncture her own Colonial lung-balloon, Volant to nigh meridian. Whence rebuffed, The perjured Scythian she lacked At need's pinch, sick with spleen of the rudely cuffed Below her breath she cursed; she cursed the hour When on her spring for him the young Tyrannical broke Amid the unhallowed wedlock's vodka-shower, She pa.s.sionate, he dispa.s.sionate; tricked Her wits to eye-blind; borrowed the ready as for dower; Till from the trance of that Hymettus-moon She woke, A nuptial-knotted derelict; Pensioned with Rescripts other aid declined By the plumped leech saturate urging Peace In guise of heavy-armed Gospeller to men, Tyrannical unto fraternal equal liberal, her. Not she; Not till Alsace her consanguineous find What red deteutonising artillery Shall shatter her beer-reek alien police The just-now pluripollent; not till then.

IV

More pungent yet the esoteric pain Squeezing her pliable vitals nourishes feud Insanely grumous, grumously insane.

For lo!

Past common balmly on the Bordereau, Churns she the skim o' the gutter's crust With Anti-Judaic various carmagnole, Whooped praise of the Anti-just; Her boulevard brood Gyratory in convolvements militant-mad; Theatrical of faith in the Belliform, Her Og, Her Monstrous. Fled what force she had To buckle the jaw-gape, wide agog For the Preconcerted One, The Antic.i.p.ated, ripe to clinch the whole; Queen-bee to hive the hither and thither volant swarm.

Bides she his coming; adumbrates the new Expurgatorial Divine, Her final effulgent Avatar, Postured outside a trampling mastodon Black as her Baker's charger; towering; visibly gorged With blood of traitors. Knee-grip stiff, Spine straightened, on he rides; Embossed the Patriot's brow with hieroglyph Of martial _dossiers_, nothing forged About him save his armour. So she bides Voicing his advent indeterminably far, Rooster her sign, Rooster her conspuent doodle-doo.

V

Behold her, pranked with spurs for b.l.o.o.d.y sport, How she acclaims, A c.r.a.pulous chanticleer, Breach of the hectic dawn of yon New Year.

Not yet her fill of rumours sucked; Inebriate of honour; blushfully wroth; Tireless to play her old primeval games; Her plumage preened the yet unplucked Like sails of a galleon, rudder hard amort With crepitant mast Fronting the hazard to dare of a dual blast The intern and the extern, blizzards both.

_Owen Seaman._

PRESTO FURIOSO

AFTER WALT WHITMAN

Spontaneous Us!

O my Camarados! I have no delicatesse as a diplomat, but I go blind on Libertad!

Give me the flap-flap of the soaring Eagle's pinions!

Give me the tail of the British lion tied in a knot inextricable, not to be solved anyhow!

Give me a standing army (I say "give me," because just at present we want one badly, armies being often useful in time of war).

I see our superb fleet (I take it that we are to have a superb fleet built almost immediately); I observe the crews prospectively; they are const.i.tuted of various nationalities, not necessarily American; I see them sling the slug and chew the plug; I hear the drum begin to hum;

Both the above rhymes are purely accidental, and contrary to my principles.

We shall wipe the floor of the mill-pond with the scalps of able-bodied British tars!

I see Professor Edison about to arrange for us a torpedo-hose on wheels, likewise an infernal electro-semaph.o.r.e; I see Henry Irving dead sick and declining to play Corporal Brewster; Cornell, I yell! I yell Cornell!

I note the Manhattan boss leaving his dry-goods store and investing in a small Gatling-gun and a ten-cent banner; I further note the Ident.i.ty evolved out of forty-four s.p.a.cious and thoughtful States; I note Canada as shortly to be merged in that Ident.i.ty; similarly Van Diemen's Land, Gibraltar, and Stratford-on-Avon; Briefly, I see creation whipped!

O ye Colonels! I am with you (I too am a Colonel and on the pension-list); I drink to the lot of you; to Colonels Cleveland, Hitt, Vanderbilt, Chauncey M. Depew, O'Donovan Rossa, and the late Colonel Monroe; I drink an egg-flip, a morning-caress, an eye-opener, a maiden-bosom, a vermuth-c.o.c.ktail, three sherry-cobblers, and a gin-sling!

Good old Eagle!

_Owen Seaman._

TO JULIA IN SHOOTING TOGS AND A HERRICKOSE VEIN