"COUNTING THE CHICKS!"
Dame Partlet broods in reverie beatific
Over as nice a "sitting"
Of golden eggs as ever fowl prolific
Tended, untired, unflitting.
Sound eggs and of good stock, there is no doubt of them.
"What will come out of them?
That question interests nor Partlet only;
No; while the speckled beauty
Sits in quiescent state, content though lonely,
The poultry-yard's prime duty
Filling her soul, how many minds are watching
That hopeful hatching!
Worthy Exchequer Hen! Layer and sitter
Of really first-rate quality.
Though rival fowls are enviously bitter,
That doth not bate her jollity.
Her duties Caquet Bonbec's game to tackle,
Without much cackle.
And then, what luck! A "run" unprecedented,
Or almost so; and fodder
With which the Laureate's Bird had been contented:
Fortune has freaks far odder
Than e'en a poet's whimsies, any day,
Her rivals say.
She must, they swear, have "raked in golden barley,"
Like the great Fleet Street "Cock."
Their jealous jeremiads, sour and snarly,
Partlet's prim feelings shock.
'Luck! Not at all: but the reward emphatic
Of skill villatic."
"Of course 'tis obvious that the Tory rooster
Has 'crammed a plumper crop'
Than Grand Old Chanticleer, that barn-yard boaster,
Whose crowings now must stop,
He thought his 'Surplus' none would nearly equal.
Behold the sequel?
'Not quite as many eggs? No, but far finer,
And not one will be addled.
He, in his day, was a Distinguished Shiner,
But then the yard he saddled
With cross-bred cocktail chicks, unprofitable
For nest or table."
So Partlet, in her own complacent musings;
And as for the outsiders,
Reckoning up their probable gains and losings,
Some fain would be deriders
Of her, her fortune, and the brood forthcoming,
Which she seems summing.
"Don't count your chickens ere they're hatched!" they snigger.
(Old saws are always dear to the censorious)
"We've seen small chickens out of eggs much bigger.
You Tory hens are always so vainglorious.
We'd see—before we join this Farm-yard Chorus—
The birds before us.
"'Free Education'; Chick? 'Free Breakfast-table'?
Or else 'Income-Tax Penny'?
Humph! All good breeds! We cannot say we're able
To cackle against any.
Were they but in our nest, we'd hatch 'em gladly,
But doubt you sadly!"
Meanwhile complacent Partlet sits and broods,
Blandly anticipative.
As for the Public, well, of all the moods
They clearly love the dative;
And, so the brood be good, won't greatly bother
As to who's mother!