your ribbons gay and your kirtle neat,
None other is so fair and sweet.
Little Bo-Peep, let’s run away,
And marry each other on Midsummer Day;
And ever to you I’ll be fond and true,
A Long-Felt Want
One day wee Willie and his dog
Sprawled on the nursery floor.
He had a florist’s catalogue,
And turned the pages o’er,
Till all at once he gave a spring,
“Hurrah!” he cried with joy;
“Mamma, here’s just the very thing
To give your little boy!
“For when we fellows go to school,
We lose our things, you know;
And in that little vestibule
They do get mixed up so.
“And as you often say you can’t
Take care of ’em for me,
Why don’t you buy a rubber plant,
And an umbrella tree?”
The Musical Carp
There once was a corpulent carp
Who wanted to play on a harp,
But to his chagrin
So short was his fin
That he couldn’t reach up to C sharp.
The Intelligent Hen
’Twas long ago,—a year or so,—
In a barnyard by the sea,
That an old hen lived whom you may know
By the name of Fiddle-de-dee.
She scratched around in the sand all day,
For a lively old hen was she.
And then do you know, it happened this way
In that barnyard by the sea;
A great wise owl came down one day,
And hooted at Fiddle-de-dee,
Just hooted at Fiddle-de-dee.
And he cried, “Hi! Hi! old hen, I say!
You’re provincial, it seems to me!”
“Why, what do you mean?” cried the old red hen,
As mad as hops was she.
“Oh, I’ve been ’round among great men,
In the world where the great men be.
And none of them scratch with their claws like you,
They write with a quill like me.”
Now very few people could get ahead
Of that old hen, Fiddle-de-dee.
She went and hunted the posy-bed,
And returned in triumphant glee.
And ever since then, that little red hen,
She writes with a jonquil pen, quil pen,
She writes with a jonquil pen.
The Happy Hyena
There once was a happy Hyena
Who played on an old concertina.
He dressed very well,
And in his lapel
He carelessly stuck a verbena.
A Great Lady
This is the Queen of Nonsense Land,
She wears her bonnet on her hand;
She carpets her ceilings and frescos her floors,
She eats on her windows and sleeps on her doors.
Oh, ho! Oh, ho! to think there could be
A lady so silly-down-dilly as she!
She goes for a walk on an ocean wave,
She fishes for cats in a coral cave;
She drinks from an empty glass of milk,
And lines her potato trees with silk.
I’m sure that fornever and never was seen
So foolish a thing as the Nonsense Queen!
She ordered a wig for a blue bottle fly,
And she wrote a note to a pumpkin pie;
She makes all the oysters wear emerald rings,
And does dozens of other nonsensible things.
Oh! the scatterbrained, shatterbrained lady so grand,
Her Royal Skyhighness of Nonsense Land!
Opulent Ollie
One Saturday opulent Ollie
Thought he’d go for a ride on the trolley;
But his pennies were few,—
He only had two,—
So he went and made mud-pies with Polly.
The Two Bears
Prince Curlilocks remarked one day
To Princess Dimplecheek,
“I haven’t had a real good play
For more than ’most a week.”
Said Princess Dimplecheek, “My dear,
Your majesty forgets—
This morning we played grenadier
With grandpa’s epaulets.
“And yesterday we sailed to Spain—
We both were pirates bold,
And braved the wild and raging main
To seek for hidden gold.”
“True,” said the prince; “I mind me well—
Right hardily we fought,
And stormed a massive citadel
To gain the prize we sought.
“But if your ladyship agrees,
Methinks we’ll go upstairs
And build a waste of arctic seas,
And we’ll be polar bears.”
“Yes, if you’ll promise not to bite,”
Fair Dimplecheek replied,
Already half-way up the flight,
His highness by her side.
“Princess, on that far window-seat,
Go, sit thee down and wait,
While I ask nursie for a sheet,
Or