Oh, there’s never a person there but goes
On the very tip of his tippy-toes;
Nor ever a lad has heard at all
Of follow-my-leader or rude baseball;
It’s much as your life is worth to yell,
The flowers can’t grow for the camphor-smell;
While a big policeman, up and down,
Cries “Sh-h!” through the streets of Nervoustown.
And a little boy, who didn’t know,
Once years and years and years ago,
Gave three loud, lusty cheers one day
For something or other, I can’t say,
And they snipped his head off—Oh! Oh! Oh!
With big, red, rusty shears, you know,
And cloth-bound heads bobbed up and down
With gladness all through Nervoustown.
But, oh, it’s gloomy in Nervoustown,
With the doors tight shut and the blinds all down,
Where the frightened lad his whole life goes
On the very tips of his tippy-toes,
Where the hens don’t cluck and the birds don’t sing,
And even the church bells dare not ring
Lest a cloth-bound head with a terrible frown
Poke out at them from Nervoustown.
SONG OF SUMMER DAYS
SING a song of hollow logs,
Chirp of cricket, croak of frogs,
Cry of wild bird, hum of bees,
Dancing leaves and whisp’ring trees;
Legs all bare and dusty toes,
Ruddy cheeks and freckled nose,
Splash of brook and swish of line,
Where the song that’s half so fine?
Sing a song of summer days,
Leafy nooks and shady ways,
Nodding roses, apples red,
Clover like a carpet spread;
Sing a song of running brooks,
Cans of bait and fishing hooks,
Dewy hollows, yellow moons,
Birds a-pipe with merry tunes.
Sing a song of skies of blue,
Eden’s garden made anew,
Scarlet hedges, leafy lanes,
Vine-embowered sills and panes;
Stretch of meadows, splashed with dew,
Silver clouds with sunlight through,
Cry of loon and pipe of wren,
Sing and call it home again.
WHAT MOTHER DOESN’T KNOW
SOMETIMES w’en I got to pile wood in the
yard,
’Ist wringin’ with sweat ’cuz I’m workin’ so
hard,
An’ see all the neighbors’ boys startin’ to fish,
I can’t hardly work any more, an’ I wish
’At I wuz a-goin’ an’ ’en right away
I run an’ ast Ma if I can’t go today,
An’ she says to me ’en: “Johnny Jones, you can run
Off an’ fish ’ist as soon as your work is all done.
You must work while you work,
You must play while you play
An’ ’en you’ll be happy for many a day.”
An’ mebbe it’s so,
But my goodness! to go
With the boys ’at’s gone fishin’!—I guess she dunno!