Short Poems

M AN'S a poor deluded bubble,
Wandering in a mist of lies:
Seeing false or seeing double,
Who would trust to such weak eyes?
Yet presuming on his senses,
On he goes most wond'rous wise:
Doubts of truth, believes pretences,
Lost in error, lives and dies.

The man in the wilderness said to me,
How many strawberries grow in the sea?
I answered him as I thought good,
As many red herrings as grow in the wood.

Man, husband existence: ne'er launch on the sea
Out of season: our tenure of life is but frail.
Think of poor Cleonicus: for Phasos sailed he
From the valleys of Syria, with many a bale:
With many a bale, ocean's tides he would stem
When the Pleiads were sinking; and he sank with them.

A man hired by John Smith and Co.
Loudly declared that he'd tho.
Men that he saw
Dumping dirt near his store.
The drivers, therefore, didn't do.

There was a maid come out of Kent,
Dainty love, dainty love;
There was a maide came out of Kent,
Dangerous be:
There was a maid came out of Kent,
Fair, proper, small and gent,
As ever upon the ground went,
For so should it be.

I THINK that Sadness is an idiot born;
She has no eyes to see the sun in heaven,
No ears to hear the music of the earth,
No voice to utter forth her own desire.

Some in a child would live, some in a book;
— When I am dead let there remain of me
Less than a word — a little passing look,
Some sign the soul had once, ere she forsook
— The form of life to live eternally.

Lucasta frown and let me die;
But smile, and see I live;
The sad indifference of your Eye
Both kills, and doth reprieve.
You hide our fate within its screen,
We feel our judgment ere we hear:
So in one Picture I have seen
An Angel here, the Divel there.

Lovely boy! thou art not dead,
But from earth to heaven fled;
For base earth was far unfit
For thy beauty, grace, and wit.

Early to bed and early to rise:
If that would make me wealthy and wise
I'd rise at daybreak, cold or hot,
And go back to bed at once. Why not?