You’ll see none’s looking; put your lip
Up like a tulip, so;
And he will coll you, bend, and sip:
Yes, Carrey, yes; I know!
THE ORPHANED OLD MAID
I wanted to marry, but father said, “No—
’Tis weakness in women to give themselves so;
If you care for your freedom you’ll listen to me,
Make a spouse in your pocket, and let the men be.”
I spake on’t again and again: father cried,
“Why—if you go husbanding, where shall I bide?
For never a home’s for me elsewhere than here!”
And I yielded; for father had ever been dear.
But now father’s gone, and I feel growing old,
And I’m lonely and poor in this house on the wold,
And my sweetheart that was found a partner elsewhere,
And nobody flings me a thought or a care.
THE SPRING CALL
Down Wessex way, when spring’s a-shine,
The blackbird’s “pret-ty de-urr!”
In Wessex accents marked as mine
Is heard afar and near.
He flutes it strong, as if in song
No R’s of feebler tone
Than his appear in “pretty dear,”
Have blackbirds ever known.
Yet they pipe “prattie deerh!” I glean,
Beneath a Scottish sky,
And “pehty de-aw!” amid the treen
Of Middlesex or nigh.
While some folk say—perhaps in play—
Who know the Irish isle,
’Tis “purrity dare!” in treeland there
When songsters would beguile.