TWO EYES OF GRAY.
"Sprats should be cooked very fresh. Their condition can be ascertained by their eyes, which should be bright."
Cookery Book.
How cold the culinary mind
That household care absorbs!
Can the observer really find
Within yon sparkling orbs
No message, nothing further than
A fitness for the frying-pan?
For oh, in that pathetic gaze
What crowded memories dwell!
What wistful dreams of briny days
Beneath the surging swell,
Ere fate had seized this little fish
And plumped him on an earthen dish!
Methinks I see him even now,
As late he sailed along
With smiling and unruffled brow
Amid the finny throng,
No gladder, gayer sprat than he
In all the caverns of the sea.
With what a rapture would he tweak
The casual kipper's tail,
Or nimbly sport at hide-and-seek
Around the whiskered whale!
(Do whales that haunt the ocean wave
Wear whiskers? Some do, others shave.)
And, when by hunger overcome
He felt a trifle limp,
What joy within his vacuum
To stow the passing shrimp,
And afterwards to sink and snooze,
Soft-cradled on the nether ooze!
Ah, yes, as I behold those eyes
So bright, so crystal-clear,
I feel within my own uprise
A sympathetic tear;
But supper's call one must obey,
And so I dash the drops away.