GOOD-BYE, PROUD WORLD.
GOOD-BYE, proud world! I'm going home;
Thou art not my friend; I'm not thine;
Too long through weary crowds I roam —
A river ark on the ocean brine;
Too long I am tossed like the driven foam;
But now, proud world, I'm going home.
Good-bye to Flattery's fawning face,
To Grandeur with his wild grimace;
To upstart Wealth's averted eye,
To supple office, low and high;
To crowded halls, to court and street,
To frozen hearts and hasting feet;
To those who go and those who come,
Good-bye, proud world, I'm going home.
I go to seek my own hearthstone,
Bosomed in yon green hills alone,
A secret lodge in a pleasant land,
Whose groves the frolic fairies planned,
Where arches green the livelong day
Echo the blackbird's roundelay,
And evil men have never trod,
A spot that is sacred to thought and God.
Oh, when I am safe in my sylvan home,
I mock at the pride of Greece and Rome;
And when I am stretched beneath the pines,
Where the evening star so holy shines,
I laugh at the lore and pride of man,
At the sophist schools, and the learned clan;
For what are they all in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet?
THE room it was hot,
And the room it was school;
So the schoolmaster got
Fast asleep on his stool,
While the scholars were having a frolic,
Bereft of all reason and rule.
When a ball, badly aimed,
Struck the schoolmaster's nose,
Which was long and quite famed
For its terrible blows;
Then he scowled on those innocent scholars,
In a way he could scowl when he chose.
"Come hither, my child,
Thou art writing, I see;"
And the schoolmaster smiled,
Come now right on my knee;
The up-strokes, you see, are made lightly,
The down-strokes are heavy and free."
While that small boy was tanned,
Came his laughter — a roar,
And the teacher, so bland,
Was now vexed, and he swore;
For the way that the awful boy giggled,
Was something unheard of before.
The teacher was beat
And deprived of his wind,
So he stood on his feet,
That small boy, who just grinned,
And who shook with a mirth that was jolly,
And felt of his back which was skinned.
"Now tell me, my son,
Ere this rod I employ
Once again for thy fun,
Why this wonderful joy?"
"Such a joke," cried the lad, wild with laughter,
You're whipping — ha, ha — the wrong boy."
THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT.
BEHOLD the mansion reared by dædal Jack!
See the malt stored in many a plethoric sack,
In the proude cirque of Ivan's bivouac.
Mark how the rat's felonious fangs invade
The golden stores in John's pavilion laid.
Anon with velvet foot and Tarquin strides,
Subtle Grimalkin to his quarry glides -
Grimalkin grim that slew the fierce rodent,
Whose tooth insidious Johann's sack-cloth rent,
Lo! now the deep-mouthed canine foes assault,
That vexed the avenger of the stolen malt,
Stored in the hallowed precincts to that hall
That rose complete at Jack's creative call.
Here stalks the impetuous cow with crumpled horn,
Whereon the exacerbating hound was torn,
Who bayed the feline slaughter-beast, that slew
The rat predacious, whose keen fangs ran through
The textile fibres that involve the grain
Which lay in Hans' inviolate domain.
Here walks forlorn the damsel crowned with rue,
Lactiferous spoils from vaccine dugs who drew
Of that corniculate beast whose tortuous horn
Tossed to the clouds, in fierce, vindictive scorn,
The hurrying hound, whose braggart bark and stir
Arched the lithe spine and reared the indignant fur
Of Puss, that, with verminicidal claw,
Struck the weird rat, in whose insatiate maw,
Lay reeking malt, that erst in Juan's courts we saw.
Robed in senescent garb, that seems, in sooth,
Too long a prey to Chronos' iron tooth,
Behold the man whose amorous lips incline,
Full of young Eros' osculative sign,
To the lorn maiden, whose lact-albic hands
Drew albu-lactic wealth from lacteal glands
Of that immortal bovine, by whose horn,
Distort to realms ethereal, was borne
The beast Catulean, vexer of that sly
Ulysses quadrupedal, who made die
The old mordacious rat that dared devour
Ante-cedaneous ale in John's domestic bower.
Lo! here, with hirsute honors doffed, succinct
Of saponaceous locks, the priest who linked
In Hymen's golden bands the torn unthrift,
Whose means exiguous stared from many a rift,
Even as he kissed the virgin all forlorn,
Who milked the cow with implicated horn,
Who in fine wrath the canine torturer skied,
That dared to vex the insidious muricide,
Who let auroral effluence through the pelt
Of the sly rat that robbed the palace Jack had built.
The loud cantankerous shanghai comes at last,
Whose shouts arouse the shorn ecclesiast,
Who sealed the vows of Hymen's sacrament
To him who, robed in garments indigent,
Exosculates the damsel lachrymose,
Th' emulgator of that horned brute morose
That tossed the dog, that worried the cat, that kilt
The rat, that ate the malt, that lay in the house that
Jack built.
WHO is dat 'ar a playin'? Shucks! I wish I wuzn't blin'; But when de Lord he tuk my eyes, he lef' my yeahs behin'. Is dat you, Mahs'r Bob? I t'ought I reco'nized your bowin';
I said I knowed 'twas you, soon's I heered de fiddle goin'.
Sho! dat ain't right—jes' le' me show you how to play dat
I feel like I could make de fiddle talk dis afternoon.
Now, don't you see that counter's jes a little bit too high? Well, nebber min' - I guess you'll learn to tune her by an'
You's jes' like all musicianers 'dat learns to play by note;
You ain't got music in you, so you has to hab it wrote;
Now dat ain't science- why de debbil don't you play by
yeah?
For dat's de onlies' kin' ob music fittin' for to heah.
Do you suppose, when David wuz a pickin' on de harp,
He ebber knowed de difference atwixt a flat an' sharp!
But any tune you called for, he could pick it all de same,
For David knowed de music, 'dough he didn't know de
Now, what shill I begin on ? Somefin' lively, fas', an’ quick ?
Well, sah, jes pay attention, an' I'll gib you Cap'n Dick." Yah! yah! young mahs'r, don't you feel jes' like you want
You'll hab to practise for awhile before you ekals dat !
Dere ain't nobody round dis place kin play wid Uncle Ned, Dey isn't got it in deir fingers, ne'der in deir head;
Dat fiddler Bill, dey talks about - I heerd him play a piece,
An' I declar' it sounded like a fox among de geese.
A violeen is like an 'ooman; mighty hard to guide,
An' mighty hard to keep in order arter onct it's buyed -
Dere's alluz somefin' 'bout it out ob kelter, more or less,
An' 'tain't de fancies' lookin' ones dat alluz does de bes'.
Dis yere's a splendid inst'ument -I 'spec' it cost a heap;
You ra❜ly ought to let me have dis fiddle for to keep —
It ain't no use to you, sah; for, widout it's in de man,
He kain't get music out de fines' fiddle in de lan'.
It 'quires a pow'r ob science for to fiddle, sah, you see,
An' science comes by natur'; dat's de way it is wid me—
But Lord! dat Bill! It 'muses me to heah him talkin' big;
You nebber heerd a braggin' fiddler play a decent jig !
Dat Bill, he is a caution, sah! I wonder now whar he
An' oder folks I knows of—yes, I wonder whar'll dey be
In Hebben, when de music's playin', an' de angels shout-
If Bill should jine in de chorus, dey would hab to put him
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