A Nonsense Anthology Part 37

HER DAIRY

"A milkweed, and a b.u.t.tercup, and cowslip," said sweet Mary, "Are growing in my garden-plot, and this I call my dairy."

_Peter Newell_.

TURVEY TOP

'Twas after a supper of Norfolk brawn That into a doze I chanced to drop, And thence awoke in the gray of dawn, In the wonder-land of Turvey Top.

A land so strange I never had seen, And could not choose but look and laugh-- A land where the small the great includes, And the whole is less than the half!

A land where the circles were not lines Round central points, as schoolmen show, And the parallels met whenever they chose, And went playing at touch-and-go!

There--except that every round was square And save that all the squares were rounds-- No surface had limits anywhere, So they never could beat the bounds.

In their gardens, fruit before blossom came, And the trees diminished as they grew; And you never went out to walk a mile, 'Twas the mile that walked to you.

The people there are not tall or short, Heavy or light, or stout or thin, And their lives begin where they should leave off, Or leave off where they should begin.

There childhood, with naught of childish glee, Looks on the world with thoughtful brow; 'Tis only the aged who laugh and crow, And cry, "We have done with it now!"

A singular race! what lives they spent!

Got up before they went to bed!

And never a man said what he meant, Or a woman meant what she said.

They blended colours that will not blend, All hideous contrasts voted sweet; In yellow and red their Quakers dress'd, And considered it rather neat.

They didn't believe in the wise and good, Said the best were worst, the wisest fools; And 'twas only to have their teachers taught That they founded national schools.

They read in "books that are no books,"

Their cla.s.sics--chess-boards neatly bound; Those their greatest authors who never wrote, And their deepest the least profound.

Now, such were the folks of that wonder-land, A curious people, as you will own; But are there none of the race abroad, Are no specimens elsewhere known?

Well, I think that he whose views of life Are crooked, wrong, perverse, and odd, Who looks upon all with jaundiced eyes-- Sees himself and believes it G.o.d,

Who sneers at the good, and makes the ill, Curses a world he cannot mend; Who measures life by the rule of wrong And abuses its aim and end,

The man who stays when he ought to move, And only goes when he ought to stop-- Is strangely like the folk in my dream, And would flourish in Turvey Top.

_Anonymous_.

WHAT THE PRINCE OF I DREAMT

I dreamt it! such a funny thing-- And now it's taken wing; I s'pose no man before or since Dreamt such a funny thing?

It had a Dragon; with a tail; A tail both long and slim, And ev'ry day he wagg'd at it-- How good it was of him!

And so to him the tailest Of all three-tailed Bashaws, Suggested that for reasons The waggling should pause;

And held his tail--which, parting, Reversed that Bashaw, which Reversed that Dragon, who reversed Himself into a ditch.

It had a monkey--in a trap-- Suspended by the tail: Oh! but that monkey look'd distress'd, And his countenance was pale.

And he had danced and dangled there; Till he grew very mad: For his tail it was a handsome tail And the trap had pinched it--bad.

The trapper sat below, and grinn'd; His victim's wrath wax'd hot: He bit his tail in two--and fell-- And killed him on the spot.

It had a pig--a stately pig; With curly tail and quaint: And the Great Mogul had hold of that Till he was like to faint.

So twenty thousand Chinamen, With three tails each at least, Came up to help the Great Mogul, And took him round the waist.

And so, the tail slipp'd through his hands; And so it came to pa.s.s, That twenty thousand Chinamen Sat down upon the gra.s.s.

It had a Khan--a Tartar Khan-- With tail superb, I wis; And that fell graceful down a back Which was considered his.

Wherefore all sorts of boys that were Accursed, swung by it; Till he grew savage in his mind And vex'd, above a bit:

And so he swept his tail, as one Awak'ning from a dream; And those abominable ones Flew off into the stream.

Likewise they hobbled up and down, Like many apples there; Till they subsided--and became Amongst the things that were.

And so it had a moral too, That would be bad to lose; "Whoever takes a Tail in hand Should mind his p's and queues."

I dreamt it!--such a funny thing!

And now it's taken wing; I s'pose no man before or since Dreamt such a funny thing?

_H. Cholmondeley-Pennell_.