What a beautiful p.u.s.s.y you are!"

p.u.s.s.y said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl, How charmingly sweet you sing!

Oh, let us be married; too long we have tarried: But what shall we do for a ring?"

They sailed away for a year and a day, To the land where the bong-tree grows; And there in the wood a Piggy-wig stood, With a ring at the end of his nose, His nose, His nose, With a ring at the end of his nose.

"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling Your ring?" Said the Piggy, "I will."

So they took it away and were married next day By the Turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince and slices of quince, Which they ate with a runcible spoon; And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, They danced by the light of the moon, The moon, The moon, They danced by the light of the moon.

_Edward Lear._

MEXICAN SERENADE

When the little armadillo With his head upon his pillow Sweetly rests, And the parrakeet and lindo Flitting past my cabin window Seek their nests,--

When the mists of even settle Over Popocatapetl, Dropping dew,-- Like the condor, over yonder, Still I ponder, ever fonder, Dear, of You!

May no revolution shock you, May the earthquake gently rock you To repose, While the sentimental panthers Sniff the pollen-laden anthers Of the rose!

While the pelican is pining, While the moon is softly shining On the stream, May the song that I am singing Send a tender cadence winging Through your dream!

I have just one wish to utter-- That you twinkle through your shutter Like a star, While, according to convention, I shall cas-u-ally mention My guitar.

Senorita Maraquita, Muy bonita, pobracita!-- Hear me weep!-- But the night is growing wetter, So I guess that you had better Go to sleep.

_Arthur Guiterman._

ORPHAN BORN

I am a lone, unfathered chick, Of artificial hatching, A pilgrim in a desert wild, By happier, mothered chicks reviled, From all relationships exiled, To do my own lone scratching.

Fair science smiled upon my birth One raw and gusty morning; But ah, the sounds of barnyard mirth To lonely me have little worth; Alone am I in all the earth-- An orphan without borning.

Seek I my mother? I would find A heartless personator; A thing bra.s.s-feathered, man-designed, With steam-pipe arteries intermined, And pulseless cotton-batting lined-- A patent incubator.

It wearies me to think, you see-- Death would be better, rather-- Should downy chicks be hatched of me, By fate's most pitiless decree, My piping pullets still would be With never a grandfather.

And when to earth I bid adieu To seek a planet greater, I will not do as others do, Who fly to join the ancestral crew, For I will just be gathered to My incubator.

_Robert J. Burdette._

DIVIDED DESTINIES

It was an artless Bandar, and he danced upon a pine, And much I wondered how he lived, and where the beast might dine, And many, many other things, till, o'er my morning smoke, I slept the sleep of idleness and dreamed that Bandar spoke.

He said: "Oh, man of many clothes! sad crawler on the Hills!

Observe, I know not Ranken's shop, nor Ranken's monthly bills!

I take no heed to trousers or the coats that you call dress; Nor am I plagued with little cards for little drinks at Mess.

"I steal the bunnia's grain at morn, at noon and eventide (For he is fat and I am spare), I roam the mountainside, I follow no man's carriage, and no, never in my life Have I flirted at Peliti's with another Bandar's wife.

"Oh, man of futile fopperies--unnecessary wraps; I own no ponies in the Hills, I drive no tall-wheeled traps; I buy me not twelve-b.u.t.ton gloves, 'short-sixes' eke, or rings, Nor do I waste at Hamilton's my wealth on pretty things.

"I quarrel with my wife at home, we never fight abroad; But Mrs. B. has grasped the fact I am her only lord.

I never heard of fever--dumps nor debts depress my soul; And I pity and despise you!" Here he pouched my breakfast-roll.

His hide was very mangy and his face was very red, And undisguisedly he scratched with energy his head.

His manners were not always nice, but how my spirit cried To be an artless Bandar loose upon the mountainside!

So I answered: "Gentle Bandar, an inscrutable Decree Makes thee a gleesome, fleasome Thou, and me a wretched Me.

Go! Depart in peace, my brother, to thy home amid the pine; Yet forget not once a mortal wished to change his lot with thine."

_Rudyard Kipling._

THE VIPER

Yet another great truth I record in my verse, That some Vipers are venomous, some the reverse; A fact you may prove if you try, By procuring two Vipers and letting them bite; With the first you are only the worse for a fright, But after the second you die.

_Hilaire Belloc._

THE LLAMA

The Llama is a woolly sort of fleecy, hairy goat, With an indolent expression and an undulating throat, Like an unsuccessful literary man.

And I know the place he lives in (or at least I think I do) It is Ecuador, Brazil or Chile--possibly Peru; You must find it in the Atlas if you can.

The Llama of the Pampases you never should confound (In spite of a deceptive similarity of sound), With the Lhama who is Lord of Turkestan.

For the former is a beautiful and valuable beast, But the latter is not lovable nor useful in the least; And the Ruminant is preferable surely to the Priest Who battens on the woful superst.i.tions of the East, The Mongol of the Monastery of Shan.

_Hilaire Belloc._