BLACK SHEEP

From their folded mates they wander far,

Their ways seem harsh and wild;

They follow the beck of a baleful star,

Their paths are dream-beguiled.

Yet haply they sought but a wider range,

Some loftier mountain-slope,

And little recked of the country strange

Beyond the gates of hope.

And haply a bell with a luring call

Summoned their feet to tread

Midst the cruel rocks, where the deep pitfall

And the lurking snare are spread.

Maybe, in spite of their tameless days

Of outcast liberty,

They’re sick at heart for the homely ways

Where their gathered brothers be.

And oft at night, when the plains fall dark

And the hills loom large and dim,

For the Shepherd’s voice they mutely hark,

And their souls go out to him.

Meanwhile, “Black sheep! Black sheep!” we cry,

Safe in the inner fold;

And maybe they hear, and wonder why,

And marvel, out in the cold.

Oliver Herford

Oliver Herford was born in December, 1863, at Manchester, England. He studied art in London and at Julien’s in Paris, turned to literature as a pastime and, about 1890, came to the United States, where he has lived ever since.

Herford, celebrated as a wit as well as a draughtsman and versifier, is the author of no less than twenty volumes of light verse, prose pasquinades and burlesques. His The Bashful Earthquake (1898), Rubaiyat of a Persian Kitten (1904) and This Giddy Globe (1919) show Herford’s delicate skill and his versatile dexterity. These volumes, like most of Herford’s, are embellished by his own drawings, which are fully as graceful as the accompanying verses.

EARTH[[15]]

If this little world to-night

Suddenly should fall through space

In a hissing, headlong flight,

Shrivelling from off its face,

As it falls into the sun,

In an instant every trace

Of the little crawling things—

Ants, philosophers, and lice,

Cattle, cockroaches, and kings,

Beggars, millionaires, and mice,

Men and maggots all as one

As it falls into the sun....

Who can say but at the same

Instant from some planet far,

A child may watch us and exclaim:

“See the pretty shooting star!”