Lena we got from an "office";
Lena was saving and Dutch—
Thought that our bills were enormous,
And told us we spent far too much.
Lena decamped with some silver,
Jewelry, laces and fur—
She was loving and kind, with a Socialist mind—
And we learned about servants from her.
Tillie blew in from the Indies,
Black as the middle of night—
Cooked like a regular Savarin—
Kitchen was shiny an' bright.
Everything ran along lovely
Until—it was bound to occur—
She ran away with a porter one day—
But we learned about servants from her.
We've taken our cooks where we've found them,
Yellow and black and white;
Some was better than others,
But none of the lot was right.
And the end of it's only worry
And trouble and bother and fuss—
When you answer an ad., think of those we have had
And learn about servants from us.
Our Dum'd Animals
What time I seek my virtuous couch to steal
Some surcease from the labours of the day,
Ere silence like a poultice comes to heal—
In short, when I prepare to hit the hay;
Ere slumber's chains (I quote from Moore) have bound me,
I hear a lot of noises all around me.
Time was when falling off the well-known log
Were harder far than falling off to sleep;
But that was ere my neighbour's gentle dog
Began to think he was defending sheep.
From twelve to two his barking and his howling
Accompanies two torn cats' nightly yowling.
At two-ten sharp the parrot in the flat
Across the way his monologue essays.
At three, again, as Gilbert says, the cat;
At four a milkman's horse, exulted, neighs.
At six-fifteen, nor does it ever vary,
I hear the dulcet tones of a canary.
Each living thing I love; I love the birds;
The beasts in field and forest, too, I love,
But I have writ these poor, if metric words,
To query which, by all the pow'rs above,
Of all the animals—pray tell me, some one—
Is called by any courtesy a dumb one?
A Soft Susurrus
A soft susurrus in the night,
A song whose singer is unseen—
'Twere poetry itself to write
"A soft susurrus in the night!"
I know, as those mosquitos bite,
That I forgot to fix that screen,
"A soft susurrus in the night!"
A song whose singer is unseen.