Short Poems

There once was a cow with a double udder.
When I think of it now, I just have to Shudder!
She was too much for One, you can bet your Life:
She had to be Milked by a Man and his Wife.

There is a Young Lady, whose nose,
Continually prospers and grows;
When it grew out of sight, she exclaimed in a fright,
" Oh! Farewell to the end of my nose! "

There was an Old Person of Pinner,
As thin as a lath, if not thinner;
They dressed him in white, and roll'd him up tight,
That elastic Old Person of Pinner.

There is one that has a head without an eye,
And there's one that has an eye without a head.
You may find the answer if you try;
And when all is said,
Half the answer hangs upon a thread.

There is a painted bus
With twenty painted seats.
It carries painted people
Along the painted streets.
They pull the painted bell,
The painted driver stops,
And they all get out together
At the little painted shops.

There is a jewel which no Indian mines
Can buy, no chemic art can counterfeit;
It makes men rich in greatest poverty;
Makes water wine, turns wooden cups to gold,
The homely whistle to sweet music's strain:
— Seldom it comes, to few from heaven sent,
— That much in little, all in naught — Content.

1. There is a high place
2. And so, perhaps high
in the upper air, So high that all the jarring sounds of
over worm and clod There is an unimaginable
earth, All cursing and all crying and all mirth Melt
goal. Where all the wars and discords of the soul Make
to one murmur and one music there.
one still music to the heart of God.

There is a bird bath on our grass,
I wait to watch it as I pass,
And see the little sparrow things
Stand on the edge with flapping wings.
They give each eye a merry wink
And stoop to take a little drink,
And then, before I'm fairly gone,
They bath with all their clothing on!

On Nunobiki Waterfall:
Someone must be
unstringing them wildly —
white beads shower down
without pause,
my sleeve too narrow to catch them

There are men in the village of Erith
Whom nobody seeth or heareth,
And there looms, on the marge
Of the river, a barge
That nobody roweth or steereth.