Ah! who has seen the mailèd lobster rise,
Clap her broad wings, and, soaring, claim the skies?
When did the owl, descending from her bower,
Crop, 'midst the fleecy flocks, the tender flower;
Or the young heifer plunge, with pliant limb,
In the salt wave, and, fish-like, try to swim?
The same with plants, potatoes 'tatoes breed,
The costly cabbage springs from cabbage-seed;
Lettuce to lettuce, leeks to leeks succeed;
Nor e'er did cooling cucumbers presume
To flower like myrtle, or like violets bloom.
The Anti-Jacobin.

LINES BY AN OLD FOGY

I'm thankful that the sun and moon
Are both hung up so high,
That no presumptuous hand can stretch
And pull them from the sky.

If they were not, I have no doubt
But some reforming ass
Would recommend to take them down
And light the world with gas.
Unknown.

A COUNTRY SUMMER PASTORAL

As written by a learned scholar of the city from knowledge derived from etymological deductions rather than from actual experience.

I would flee from the city's rule and law,
From its fashion and form cut loose,
And go where the strawberry grows on its straw,
And the gooseberry on its goose;
Where the catnip tree is climbed by the cat
As she crouches for her prey—
The guileless and unsuspecting rat
On the rattan bush at play.
I will watch at ease for the saffron cow
And the cowlet in their glee,
As they leap in joy from bough to bough
On the top of the cowslip tree;
Where the musical partridge drums on his drum,
And the dog devours the dogwood plum
And the wood chuck chucks his wood,
In the primitive solitude.
And then to the whitewashed dairy I'll turn,
Where the dairymaid hastening hies,
Her ruddy and golden-haired butter to churn
From the milk of her butterflies;
And I'll rise at morn with the early bird,
To the fragrant farm-yard pass,
When the farmer turns his beautiful herd
Of grasshoppers out to grass.
Unknown.

TURVEY TOP