In vain their downy coats were shorn:
They floundered still;—Batch after batch went!
The little fools seemed only born
And hatched for nothing but a hatchment!
Whene’er they launched—oh sight of wonder!
Like fires the water “got them under!”
No woman ever gave their lucks
A better chance than Mrs. Bond did;
At last quite out of heart and ducks,
She gave her pond up and desponded;
For Death among the water lilies,
Cried “Duc ad me,” to all her dillies.
But though resolved to breed no more,
She brooded often on this riddle—
Alas! twas darker than before!
At last, about the summer’s middle,
What Johnson, Mrs. Bond, or none did,
To clear the matter up the sun did!
The thirsty Sirius, dog-like, drank
So deep his furious tongue to cool,
The shallow waters sank and sank,
And lo, from out the wasted pool,
Too hot to hold them any longer,
There crawled some eels as big as conger!
I wish all folks would look a bit,
In such a case below the surface;
But when the eels were caught and split
By Mrs. Bond, just think of her face,
In each inside at once to spy
A duckling turned to giblet pie!
The sight at once explained the case,
Making the Dame look rather silly,
The tenants of that Eely Place
Had found the way to Pick a dilly,
And so by under-water suction,
Had wrought the little ducks abduction.
DIBDIN MODERNIZED.
I steamed from the Downs in the Nancy,
My jib how she smoked through the breeze.
She’s a vessel as tight to my fancy
As ever boil’d through the salt seas.
* * * * * *
When up the flue the sailor goes
And ventures on the pot,
The landsman, he no better knows,
But thinks hard is his lot.
Bold Jack with smiles each danger meets,
Weighs anchor, lights the log;
Trims up the fire, picks out the slates,
And drinks his can of grog.
* * * * * *
Go patter to lubbers and swabs, do you see,
‘Bout danger, and fear, and the like;
But a Boulton and Watt and good Wall’s end give me;
And it an’t too a little I’ll strike.