school

So how is life with your new bloke?
Simpler, I bet. Just one stroke
of his quivering oar and the skin
of the Thames goes into a spin,

eh? How is life with an oarsman? Better?
More in--out? Athletic? Wetter?
When you hear the moan of the rowlocks,
do you urge him on like a cox?

Tell me, is he bright enough to find
that memo-pad you call a mind?
Or has he contrived to bring you out--
given you an in-tray and an out?

How did I ever fall for a paper-clip?

In the lands away beyond the sea, where Khan and Sultan rule,
Where they drink their coffee thick and black, and sip the sherbet cool,
They have white Circassian girls for slaves, as well as the Negro black;
And it seems to me in our free land that slavery's coming back:
It's fenced about with custom and law, and they give it a prettier name.
But, spite of the paltry wage that's paid, it's slavery all the same.

In a handsome home in a stately town is worthy Mrs MacFee,
Chairwoman known of a Christian guild, for a noble dame is she:

Jonas Keene thought his lot a hard one
Because his children were all failures.
But I know of a fate more trying than that:
It is to be a failure while your children are successes.
For I raised a brood of eagles
Who flew away at last, leaving me
A crow on the abandoned bough.
Then, with the ambition to prefix Honorable to my name,
And thus to win my children's admiration,
I ran for County Superintendent of Schools,
Spending my accumulations to win -- and lost.
That fall my daughter received first prize in Paris

Epilogue to 'A Vision'

MIDNIGHT has come, and the great Christ Church Bell
And may a lesser bell sound through the room;
And it is All Souls' Night,
And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel
Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come;
For it is a ghost's right,
His element is so fine
Being sharpened by his death,
To drink from the wine-breath
While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.
I need some mind that, if the cannon sound
From every quarter of the world, can stay
Wound in mind's pondering

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,

(THE LATEST SCHOOL)

(French airmen have been flying over Baden and
Bavaria, violating Belgian neutrality
--Stated on German authority in the Westminster Gazette)

SEE the flying French depart
Like the bees of Bonaparte,
Swarming up with a most venomous vitality.
Over Baden and Bavaria,
And Brighton and Bulgaria,
Thus violating Belgian neutrality.

And the injured Prussian may
Not unreasonably say
"Why, it cannot be so small a nationality
Since Brixton and Batavia,

Our tongues were made to bless the Lord,
And not speak ill of men:
When others give a railing word,
We must not rail again.

Cross words and angry names require
To be chastised at school;
And he's in danger of hell-fire
That calls his brother fool.

But lips that dare be so profane
To mock, and jeer, and scoff
At holy things, or holy men,
The Lord shall cut them off.

When children, in their wanton play,
Served old Elisha so,
And bade the prophet go his way,

To grow old is to lose everything.
Aging, everybody knows it.
Even when we are young,
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters
into debris on the shore,
and a friend from school drops
cold on a rocky strand.
If a new love carries us
past middle age, our wife will die
at her strongest and most beautiful.
New women come and go. All go.

Bless those little children
That love to go to school;
Blessed be the children
That obey the golden rule.

Children, love your parents,
For they have cared for you;
When you were little infants
They watched and prayed for you.

CHORUS:

Bless those little children
That go to Sabbath school,
For they hear of Jesus,
And learn the golden rule.

Prayed that you might some day
Give a pleasant smile,
Be a comfort in their old age,
And be a loving child.

As I was walking down the street
A week ago,
Near Henderson's I chanced to meet
A man I know.

His name is Alexander Bell,
His home, Dundee;
I do not know him quite so well
As he knows me.

He gave my hand a hearty shake,
Discussed the weather,
And then proposed that we should take
A stroll together.

Down College Street we took our way,
And there we met
The beautiful Miss Mary Gray,
That arch coquette,
Who stole last spring my heart away