But this thought came ere yet I spake, It came like some familiar rhyme, Some copy to my boyhood set; And that's perhaps the reason I'm Unmarried yet. Would she have own'd how pleas'd she was, Be kind to babes and beasts and birds, Joseph Ashby-Sterry A MARLOW MADRIGAL Он, Bisham Banks are fresh and fair, I love the music of the weir, As swift the stream runs down, When London's getting hot and dry, I paddle up to Harleyford, And sometimes I incline To cushions take with lunch aboard, And let my face get brown; I go to luncheon at the Lawn, So when no longer London life Of beakless things, who have no wings, If this my song its theme should wrong, And first, I praise the nobler traits These, by the hints we get from prints I sing each race whom we displace I celebrate each perish'd State; Great cities plough'd to loam; Chaldæan kings; the Bulls with wings; Dead Greece, and dying Rome. The Druids' shrine may shelter swine, Or stack the farmer's peat; 'Tis thus mean moths treat finest cloths, Mean men the obsolete. Shall nought be said of theories dead? Sihons and Ogs? and showers of frogs? Pillion and pack have left their track; Steam rails cut down each festive crown O fancy, why hast thou let die Books he shall read in hill and tree; Such man in England I have seen; I had been Gilbert White. Sir Frederick Pollock THE SIX CARPENTERS' CASE (1 Smith, L. C. 133, 7th Ed.) THIS case befell at four of the clock (now listeneth what I shall say), and the year was the seventh of James the First, on a fine September day. The birds on the bough sing loud and sing low, what trespass shall be ab initio. It was Thomas Newman and five his feres (three more would have made them nine), and they entered into John Vaux's house, that had the Queen's Head to sign. The birds on the bough sing loud and sing low, what trespass shall be ab initio. They called anon for a quart of wine (they were carpenters all by trade), and they drank about till they drank it out, and when they had drunk they paid. The birds on the bough sing loud and sing low, what trespass shall be ab initio. One spake this word in John Ridding's ear (white manchets are sweet and fine): "THE LAND OF WONDER-WANDER” THE JUMBLIES Edward Lear THEY went to sea in a sieve, they did; In a sieve they went to sea. And when the sieve turn'd round and round, And every one cried, "You 'll be drown'd!" They call'd aloud, "Our sieve ain't big : But we don't care a button; we don't care a fig: In a sieve we 'll go to sea!" Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live: Their heads are green, and their hands are blue; And they went to sea in a sieve. Yet we never can think we were rash or wrong, While round in our sieve we spin." And all night long they sail'd away; And, when the sun went down, They whistled and warbled a moony song To the echoing sound of a coppery gong, In the shade of the mountains brown, "O Timballoo! how happy we are When we live in a sieve and a crockeryjar! And all night long, in the moonlight pale, We sail away with a pea-green sail In the shade of the mountains brown.” They sail'd to the Western Sea, they did, - And they bought a pig, and some green jackdaws, And a lovely monkey with lollipop paws, And forty bottles of ring-bo-ree, And no end of Stilton cheese : |