A LAUREATE'S LOG

(Rough-weather notes from the New Birthday-Book)

IF you're waking, please don't call me, please don't call me, Currie dear,

For they tell me that to-morrow toward the open we're to steer!

No doubt, for you and those aloft, the maddest merriest way,—

But I always feel best in a bay, Currie,

I always feel best in a bay.

Take, take, take?

What will I take for tea?

The thinnest slice—no butter,

And that's quite enough for me.

It is the little roll within the berth

That, by and by, will put an end to mirth,

And, never ceasing, slowly prostrate all.

Let me alone! What pleasure can you have

In chaffing evil? Tell me what's the fun

Of ever climbing up the climbing wave?

All you, the rest, you know how to behave

In roughish weather! I, for one

Ask for the shore—or death, dark death,—

I am so done.

Twelve knots an hour! But what am I?

A poet with no land in sight,

Insisting that he feels "all right,"

With half a smile and half a sigh.

Comfort? Comfort scorned of lubbers! Hear this truth the Poet roar,

That a sorrow's crown of sorrows is remembering days on shore.

Drug his soda lest he learn it when the foreland gleams a speck

In the dead unhappy night, when he can't sit up on deck!

Ah! you've called me nice and early, nice and early, Currie dear!

What? Really in? Well, come, the news I'm precious glad to hear;

For though in such good company I willingly would stay—

I'm glad to be back in the bay, Currie,

I'm glad to be back in the bay.

Punch.