PRAE AND POST.
"The man in the moon
Came down too soon
To inquire the way to Norwich;
The man in the south,
He burnt his mouth
With eating cold plum porridge."
The moony men are always in a hurry
That puts sedater people in a flurry,
They get their theories through other media
Than facts of gazetteer or cyclopaedia;
And then, by some unknown, preposterous
gateway,
Rush forth to claim the realizing straight-
way.
Just think of lighting on a foreign planet,
Asking for Norwich before folks began it!
But then, those sleepy souls at the equator
Lose just as much, you see, by starting
later;
Never strike in while anything is hot,—
Wait till the porridge is all out o' the
pot;—
And through their indolence and easy fool-
ing
Burn their mouths, figuratively, in the cool-
ing!
Too soon, too slow, there's nothing comes
out even;
The very sun that travels through the
heaven
Heels o'er the line, now this way and now
that,
And only twice a year can hit it pat.
Even your two eyes make a parallax,
And might mislead you on two different
tracks;
Between them both, the moral, I suppose,
Is that each man should follow his own
nose!