THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT

AND this reft house is that the which he built,

Lamented Jack! and here his malt he piled.

Cautious in vain! these rats that squeak so wild,

Squeak not unconscious of their father's guilt.

Did he not see her gleaming through the glade!

Belike 'twas she, the maiden all forlorn.

What though she milked no cow with crumpled horn,

Yet, aye she haunts the dale where erst she strayed:

And aye before her stalks her amorous knight!

Still on his thighs their wonted brogues are worn,

And through those brogues, still tattered and betorn,

His hindward charms gleam an unearthly white.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

TRILOBITE, Graptolite, Nautilus pie;

Seas were calcareous, oceans were dry.

Eocene, miocene, pliocene Tuff,

Lias and Trias and that is enough.

BYE Baby Bunting,

Father's gone star-hunting;

Mother's at the telescope

Casting baby's horoscope.

Bye Baby Buntoid,

Father's found an asteroid;

Mother takes by calculation

The angle of its inclination.

LITTLE bo-peepals

Has lost her sepals,

And can't tell where to find them;

In the involucre

By hook or by crook or

She'll make up her mind not to mind them.

OH, sing a song of phosphates,

Fibrine in a line,

Four-and-twenty follicles

In the van of time.

When the phosphorescence

Evoluted brain,

Superstition ended,

Men began to reign.

Rev. Joseph Cook.