“Love me, love my dog,” is a fearful cut—Mr. Hood’s step-mother, and her precious “Bijou”—with a story, and a tail-piece—“O list unto my tale of woe,”—unnaturally natural.
One of the best pieces in the volume is “The Irish Schoolmaster,” who, from a clay cabin, “the College of Kilreen,” hangs out a board, “with painted letters red as blood,” announcing “Children taken in to bate.”
Six babes he sways,—some little and some big,
Divided into classes six;—alsoe,
He keeps a parlour boarder of a pig,
That in the college fareth to and fro,
And picketh up the urchins’ crumbs below
And eke the learned rudiments they scan,
And thus his A, B, C doth wisely know,—
Hereafter to be shown in caravan,
And raise the wonderment of many a learned man.
Alsoe, he schools some tame familiar fowls,
Whereof, above his head, some two or three
Sit darkly squatting, like Minerva’s owls,
But on the branches of no living tree,
And overlook the learned family;
While, sometimes, Partlet, from her gloomy perch,
Drops feather on the nose of Dominie,
Meanwhile, with serious eye, he makes research
In leaves of that sour tree of knowledge—now a birch.
*******
Now, by the creeping shadows of the moon,
The hour is come to lay aside their lore;
The cheerful pedagogue perceives it soon,
And cries, “Begone!” unto the imps,—and four
Snatch their two hats and struggle for the door,
Like ardent spirits vented from a cask,
All blythe and boisterous,—but leave two more,
With Reading made Uneasy for a task,
To weep, whilst all their mates in merry sunshine bask,
Like sportive elfins on the verdant sod,
With tender moss so sleekly overgrown,
That doth not hurt, but kiss, the sole unshod,
So soothely kind is Erin to her own!
And one, at hare and hound, plays all alone,—
For Phelim’s gone to tend his step-dame’s cow;
Ah! Phelim’s step-dame is a canker’d crone!
Whilst other twain play at an Irish row,
And, with shillelah small, break one another’s brow!
But careful Dominie, with ceaseless thrift,
Now changeth ferula for rural hoe;
But, first of all, with tender hand doth shift
His college gown, because of solar glow,
And hangs it on a bush to scare the crow:
Meanwhile, he plants in earth the dappled bean,
Or trains the young potatoes all a-row,
Or plucks the fragrant leek for pottage green,
With that crisp curly herb, call’d Kale in Aberdeen.