Tell him I'm well, and mavourneen Daisy (The baby yer honor), is better again. For when he wint off so sick was the crayther, So he left her in danger, an me sorely gravin, Tell him to sind us a bit of his money, For the rint and the docther's bill, due in a wake, An, shure there's a tear on yer eyelashes honey, I' faith I've no right with such fradom to spake. I'm over much thrifling, I'll not give ye trouble, Dead! Patrick O'Conner! oh God its some ither, Dead! dead! O God, am I crazy? Shure its brakin my heart ye are telling me so, An what en the world will I do wid poor Daisy? O what can I do? where can I go? This room is so dark-I'm not seein yer honor, M. A. Denison. From Atalanta in Calydon. Before the beginning of years There came to the making of man, Time, with a gift of tears; Grief, with a glass that ran; Pleasure, with pain for leaven; Summer, with flowers that fell; Remembrance fallen from Heaven, And madness risen from hell; Strength without hands to smite; Love that endures for a breath; Night, the shadow of light, And life, the shadow of death. And the high gods took in hand From under the feet of the years; And froth and drift of the sea; And dust of the laboring earth; And bodies of things to be In the houses of death and of birth; And wrought with weeping and laughter, And fashioned with loathing and love, With life before and after, And death beneath and above, For a day and a night and a morrow, That his strength might endure for a spau With travail and heavy sorrow, The holy spirit of man. From the winds of the north and the south They gathered as unto strife; They breathed upon his mouth, A time for labor and thought, A time to serve and to sin; And night, and sleep in the night. With his lips he travaileth; In his heart is a blind desire, In his eyes foreknowledge of death; His life is a watch or a vision Between a sleep and a sleep. Algernon Chas. Swinburn Darius Green and his Flying Machine. If ever there lived a Yankee lad, Wise or otherwise, good or bad, Who, seeing the birds fly, did n't jump With flapping arms from stake or stump, Of his coat for a sail, Take a soaring leap from post or rail, That he had riveted his attention Upon his wonderful invention, Twisting his tongue as he twisted the strings, And working his face as he worked the wings, And with every turn of gimlet and screw Turning and screwing his mouth round too, Till his nose seemed bent To catch the scent, Around some corner, of new-baked pies, And wise he must have been, to do more And his son Icarus, who wore Upon their backs Those wings of wax He had read of in the the old almanacks. Darius was clearly of the opinion, That the air is also man's dominion, Shall navigate The azure as now we sail the sea. The thing looks simple enough to me; And if you doubt it, Hear how Darius reasoned about it. "The birds can fly, An' why can't I? Must we give in," Says he with a grin, "That the bluebird an' phoebe Jest fold our hands an' see the swaller An' blackbird an' catbird beat us holler? No bigger 'n my thumb, know more than men? Ur prove 't the bat Hez got more brains than 's in my hat, He argued further: "Nor I can't see Important 's his 'n is? That Icarus Made a perty muss, Him an' his daddy Dædalus. They might 'a' knowed wings made o' wax I'll make mine o' luther, Ur suthin' ur other." And he said to himself, as he tinkered and planned: "But I ain't goin' to show my hand To nummies that never can understand And in the loft above the shed Himself he locks, with thimble and thread, And wax and hammer and buckles and screws, |