The Book of Humorous Verse Part 69

If thou wert mine, quite changed would be these features.

Then, I suspect, Thou wouldst the humblest prove of loving creatures, And not object To do the very things I am declaring I'd undertake for _thee_, with selfless daring, If thou wert mine.

If we were ours? And now, here comes the riddle!

How would that work?

I'm sure _you'd_ never stoop to second fiddle, And--I might shirk The part of serf. And, likewise, each might neither Be willing slave or servitor of either, If we were ours!

_Madeline Bridges._

THE BALLAD OF Ca.s.sANDRA BROWN

Though I met her in the summer, when one's heart lies round at ease, As it were in tennis costume, and a man's not hard to please, Yet I think that any season to have met her was to love, While her tones, unspoiled, unstudied, had the softness of the dove.

At request she read us poems in a nook among the pines, And her artless voice lent music to the least melodious lines; Though she lowered her shadowing lashes, in an earnest reader's wise, Yet we caught blue, gracious glimpses of the heavens which were her eyes.

As in paradise I listened--ah, I did not understand That a little cloud, no larger than the average human hand, Might, as stated oft in fiction, spread into a sable pall, When she said that she should study Elocution in the fall!

I admit her earliest efforts were not in the Ercles vein; She began with "Little Maaybel, with her faayce against the payne And the beacon-light a-t-r-r-remble"--which, although it made me wince, Is a thing of cheerful nature to the things she's rendered since.

Having heard the Soulful Quiver, she acquired the Melting Mo-o-an, And the way she gave "Young Grayhead" would have liquefied a stone.

Then the Sanguinary Tragic did her energies employ, And she tore my taste to tatters when she slew "The Polish Boy."

It's not pleasant for a fellow when the jewel of his soul Wades through slaughter on the carpet, while her orbs in frenzy roll; What was I that I should murmur? Yet it gave me grievous pain That she rose in social gatherings, and Searched among the Slain.

I was forced to look upon her in my desperation dumb, Knowing well that when her awful opportunity was come She would give us battle, murder, sudden death at very least, As a skeleton of warning, and a blight upon the feast.

Once, ah! once I fell a-dreaming; some one played a polonaise I a.s.sociated strongly with those happier August days; And I mused, "I'll speak this evening," recent pangs forgotten quite-- Sudden shrilled a scream of anguish: "Curfew shall not ring to-night!"

Ah, that sound was as a curfew, quenching rosy, warm romance-- Were it safe to wed a woman one so oft would wish in France?

Oh, as she "cul-limbed" that ladder, swift my mounting hope came down, I am still a single cynic; she is still Ca.s.sandra Brown!

_Helen Gray Cone._

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

In letters large upon the frame, That visitors might see, The painter placed his humble name: _O'Callaghan McGee_.

And from Beersheba unto Dan, The critics with a nod Exclaimed: "This painting Irishman Adores his native sod.

"His stout heart's patriotic flame There's naught on earth can quell; He takes no wild romantic name To make his pictures sell!"

Then poets praise in sonnets neat His stroke so bold and free; No parlour wall was thought complete That hadn't a McGee.

All patriots before McGee Threw lavishly their gold; His works in the Academy Were very quickly sold.

His "Digging Clams at Barnegat,"

His "When the Morning smiled,"

His "Seven Miles from Ararat,"

His "Portrait of a Child,"

Were purchased in a single day And lauded as divine.--

That night as in his _atelier_ The artist sipped his wine,

And looked upon his gilded frames, He grinned from ear to ear:-- "They little think my _real_ name's V. Stuyvesant De Vere!"

_R. K. Munkittrick._

TOO LATE

"_Ah! si la jeunesse savait_,--_si la vieillesse pouvait_!"

There sat an old man on a rock, And unceasing bewailed him of Fate,-- That concern where we all must take stock, Though our vote has no hearing or weight; And the old man sang him an old, old song,-- Never sang voice so clear and strong That it could drown the old man's for long, For he sang the song "Too late! too late!"

When we want, we have for our pains The promise that if we but wait Till the want has burned out of our brains, Every means shall be present to state; While we send for the napkin the soup gets cold, While the bonnet is tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the face grows old, When we've matched our b.u.t.tons the pattern is sold And everything comes too late,--too late!

"When strawberries seemed like red heavens,-- Terrapin stew a wild dream,-- When my brain was at sixes and sevens, If my mother had 'folks' and ice cream, Then I gazed with a lickerish hunger At the restaurant man and fruit-monger,-- But oh! how I wished I were younger When the goodies all came in a stream! in a stream!

"I've a splendid blood horse, and--a liver That it jars into torture to trot; My row-boat's the gem of the river,-- Gout makes every knuckle a knot!

I can buy boundless credits on Paris and Rome, But no palate for _menus_,--no eyes for a dome,-- _Those_ belonged to the youth who must tarry at home, When no home but an attic he'd got,--he'd got!

"How I longed, in that lonest of garrets, Where the tiles baked my brains all July, For ground to grow two pecks of carrots, Two pigs of my own in a sty, A rosebush,--a little thatched cottage,-- Two spoons--love--a basin of pottage!-- Now in freestone I sit,--and my dotage,-- With a woman's chair empty close by, close by!

"Ah! now, though I sit on a rock, I have shared one seat with the great; I have sat--knowing naught of the clock-- On love's high throne of state; But the lips that kissed, and the arms that caressed, To a mouth grown stern with delay were pressed, And circled a breast that their clasp had blessed, Had they only not come too late,--too late!"

_Fitz Hugh Ludlow._

THE ANNUITY

I gaed to spend a week in Fife-- An unco week it proved to be-- For there I met a waesome wife Lamentin' her viduity.

Her grief brak out sae fierce and fell, I thought her heart wad burst the sh.e.l.l; And,--I was sae left to mysel',-- I sell't her an annuity.