He had lost his leg,
While at sea he said—
Got wrecked on a desert isle,
Where the cannibals,
And the animals
Had given themselves the bile.
They had tried to eat
Some of Mike's own meat,
And one of his legs prepared,
But they found the stuff
Was exceeding tough,
So that's why his life was spared.
* * * * * * * *
Now I don't ask you.
To believe it's true,
For Mike was a bad old man.
I with him agreed,
For to get a feed,
Believing it like a lamb.
THE SPECTRE
They call it the Prairie Madness.
Be-ware as you enter its lair,
For many have started in gladness.
But few can the loneliness bear.
* * * * * * * *
Desolate, lonely, forsaken, deserted for many a year,
The joy of a soul in its building, with its hopes, lie
buried here;
For the grim old shack has a story that few but the
winds ever know,
The man who lived for its building, the man who was
wrecked in its woe.
Bringing his logs from the mountain, toting them
over the plain,
Never a thought of his danger, smiling again and again,
Thinking of her who would help him, watching his
work as it grew,
Speaking aloud in the silence the things that he meant
to do.
Fretting alone through the winter, planning his plans all anew,
Wondering why in the silence shapes in his memory grew.
Trying to crush out the Spectre, still by his side it would lurk,
Humming the snatch of a chorus, hymns he had sung in the Kirk.
Cooking his sol-a-try supper, dreaming of days that should come;
Love that his soul could not utter held him unspeakably dumb,
Trying to pierce through the shadows, oft that would darken
his brain,
Laughing because of the fancies, following on in their train.