A SONG OF PROVERBS.
I know that truth’s stranger than fiction,
And I fancy I don’t stand alone,
If I cling to an old predilection,
For killing two birds with one stone;
I never shed tears that are bitter
Over milk that I know to be spilt,
And whenever gold happens to glitter
I make up my mind that its gilt;
Yet the riddle of life grows no clearer,
And still broken-hearted I yearn
For the season that never draws nearer—
When a worm may take courage and turn.
And if for a moment I wander
Into themes more profound and abstruse,
To note that the sauce for a gander
Is also the sauce for the goose;
That one man is free to steal horses,
While another is punished by fate,
Who shuns all such virtuous courses,
And dares to look over a gate,—
It is but for the sake of forgetting
What gives me far greater concern,
It is but with a view of abetting
A worm in its efforts to turn.
I could live and not care in the slightest
To know when a dog had his day,
And though the sun shone at its brightest,
I could let other people make hay.
I could perish without ascertaining
Why pearls should be cast before swine,
I could die without ever complaining
That one stitch will never save nine;
And though I once had the ambition
A candle at both ends to burn,
The old craving might go to perdition
If I knew that a worm had its turn.
These little pieces were admirably rendered by Mr. Alfred Reed and his company, and they won instant success.
I can see Mr. Clement Scott’s delighted face just under my box on the first night of The United Pair and hear his burst of laughter at the concluding line of the “Song of the China Collectors.”
But the one of the three comediettas upon which Joe spent the most pleasant care was The Friar—a little thirteenth century fancy of his own invention and for which he wrote the following verses, giving charming expression to the pique of a high-born damsel towards her proud lover and the sorrow of the shepherd swain who becomes the favourite of an hour.