The Book of Humorous Verse Part 5

You drop a pretty _jeu-de-mot_ Into a neighbor's ears, Who likes to give you credit for The clever thing he hears, And so he hawks your jest about, The old authentic one, Just breaking off the point of it, And leaving out the pun!

By sudden change in politics, Or sadder change in Polly, You, lose your love, or loaves, and fall A prey to melancholy, While everybody marvels why Your mirth is under ban,-- They think your very grief "a joke,"

You're such a funny man!

You follow up a stylish card That bids you come and dine, And bring along your freshest wit (To pay for musty wine), You're looking very dismal, when My lady bounces in, And wonders what you're thinking of And why you don't begin!

You're telling to a knot of friends A fancy-tale of woes That cloud your matrimonial sky, And banish all repose-- solemn lady overhears The story of your strife, And tells the town the pleasant news: You quarrel with your wife!

My dear young friend, whose shining wit Sets all the room a-blaze, Don't think yourself "a happy dog,"

For all your merry ways; But learn to wear a sober phiz, Be stupid, if you can, It's such a very serious thing To be a funny man!

_John G. Saxe._

EARLY RISING

"G.o.d bless the man who first invented sleep!"

So Sancho Panza said, and so say I: And bless him, also, that he didn't keep His great discovery to himself; nor try To make it--as the lucky fellow might-- A close monopoly by patent-right!

Yes--bless the man who first invented sleep, (I really can't avoid the iteration;) But blast the man, with curses loud and deep, Whate'er the rascal's name, or age, or station, Who first invented, and went round advising, That artificial cut-off--Early Rising!

"Rise with the lark, and with the lark to bed,"

Observes some solemn, sentimental owl; Maxims like these are very cheaply said; But, ere you make yourself a fool or fowl, Pray just inquire about his rise and fall, And whether larks have any beds at all!

The time for honest folks to be a-bed Is in the morning, if I reason right; And he who cannot keep his precious head Upon his pillow till it's fairly light, And so enjoy his forty morning winks, Is up to knavery; or else--he drinks!

Thompson, who sung about the "Seasons," said It was a glorious thing to _rise_ in season; But then he said it--lying--in his bed, At ten o'clock A.M.,--the very reason He wrote so charmingly. The simple fact is His preaching wasn't sanctioned by his practice.

'Tis, doubtless, well to be sometimes awake,-- Awake to duty, and awake to truth,-- But when, alas! a nice review we take Of our best deeds and days, we find, in sooth, The hours that leave the slightest cause to weep Are those we pa.s.sed in childhood or asleep!

'Tis beautiful to leave the world awhile For the soft visions of the gentle night; And free, at last, from mortal care or guile, To live as only in the angel's sight, In sleep's sweet realm so cosily shut in, Where, at the worst, we only _dream_ of sin!

So let us sleep, and give the Maker praise.

I like the lad who, when his father thought To clip his morning nap by hackneyed phrase Of vagrant worm by early songster caught, Cried, "Served him right!--it's not at all surprising; The worm was punished, sir, for early rising!"

_John G. Saxe._

TO THE PLIOCENE SKULL

"Speak, O man less recent!

Fragmentary fossil!

Primal pioneer of pliocene formation, Hid in lowest drifts below the earliest stratum Of volcanic tufa!

"Older than the beasts, the oldest Palaeotherium; Older than the trees, the oldest Cryptogami; Older than the hills, those infantile eruptions Of earth's epidermis!

"Eo--Mio--Plio--whatsoe'er the 'cene' was That those vacant sockets filled with awe and wonder,-- Whether sh.o.r.es Devonian or Silurian beaches,-- Tell us thy strange story!

"Or has the professor slightly antedated By some thousand years thy advent on this planet, Giving thee an air that's somewhat better fitted For cold-blooded creatures?

"Wert thou true spectator of that mighty forest When above thy head the stately Sigillaria Reared its columned trunks in that remote and distant Carboniferous epoch?

"Tell us of that scene--the dim and watery woodland, Songless, silent, hushed, with never bird or insect, Veiled with spreading fronds and screened with tall club-mosses, Lycopodiacea,--

"When beside thee walked the solemn Plesiosaurus, And all around thee crept the festive Ichthyosaurus, While from time to time above thee flew and circled Cheerful Pterodactyls;--

"Tell us of thy food,--those half-marine refections, Crinoids on the sh.e.l.l, and Brachipods _au naturel_,-- Cuttle-fish to which the _pieuvre_ of Victor Hugo Seems a periwinkle.

"Speak, thou awful vestige of the Earth's creation-- Solitary fragment of remains organic!

Tell the wondrous secret of thy past existence-- Speak! thou oldest primate!"

Even as I gazed, a thrill of the maxilla, And a lateral movement of the condyloid process, With post-pliocene sounds of healthy mastication, Ground the teeth together.

And, from that imperfect dental exhibition, Stained with expressed juices of the weed Nicotian, Came these hollow accents, blent with softer murmurs Of expectoration:

"Which my name is Bowers, and my crust was busted Falling down a shaft in Calaveras county, But I'd take it kindly if you'd send the pieces Home to old Missouri!"

_Bret Harte._

ODE TO WORK IN SPRINGTIME

Oh, would that working I might shun, From labour my connection sever, That I might do a bit--or none Whatever!

That I might wander over hills, Establish friendship with a daisy, O'er pretty things like daffodils Go crazy!

That I might at the heavens gaze, Concern myself with nothing weighty, Loaf, at a stretch, for seven days-- Or eighty.

Why can't I cease a slave to be, And taste existence beatific On some fair island, hid in the Pacific?

Instead of sitting at a desk 'Mid undone labours, grimly lurking-- Oh, say, what is there picturesque In working?

But no!--to loaf were misery!-- I love to work! Hang isles of coral!

(To end this otherwise would be Immoral!)

_Thomas R. Ybarra._