class="poem c25">And then do you know, it happened this way
In that barnyard by the sea;
A great wise owl came down one day,
And hooted at Fiddle-de-dee,
Just hooted at Fiddle-de-dee.
And he cried, “Hi! Hi! old hen, I say!
You’re provincial, it seems to me!”

“Why, what do you mean?” cried the old red hen,
As mad as hops was she.
“Oh, I’ve been ’round among great men,
In the world where the great men be.
And none of them scratch with their claws like you,
They write with a quill like me.”

Now very few people could get ahead
Of that old hen, Fiddle-de-dee.
She went and hunted the posy-bed,
And returned in triumphant glee.
And ever since then, that little red hen,
She writes with a jonquil pen, quil pen,
She writes with a jonquil pen.

The Happy Hyena

There once was a happy Hyena
Who played on an old concertina.
He dressed very well,
And in his lapel
He carelessly stuck a verbena.

A Great Lady

This is the Queen of Nonsense Land,
She wears her bonnet on her hand;
She carpets her ceilings and frescos her floors,
She eats on her windows and sleeps on her doors.
Oh, ho! Oh, ho! to think there could be
A lady so silly-down-dilly as she!

She goes for a walk on an ocean wave,
She fishes for cats in a coral cave;
She drinks from an empty glass of milk,
And lines her potato trees with silk.
I’m sure that fornever and never was seen
So foolish a thing as the Nonsense Queen!

She ordered a wig for a blue bottle fly,
And she wrote a note to a pumpkin pie;
She makes all the oysters wear emerald rings,
And does dozens of other nonsensible things.
Oh! the scatterbrained, shatterbrained lady so grand,
Her Royal Skyhighness of Nonsense Land!

Opulent Ollie

One Saturday opulent Ollie
Thought he’d go for a ride on the trolley;
But his pennies were few,—
He only had two,—
So he went and made mud-pies with Polly.

The Two Bears

Prince Curlilocks remarked one day
To Princess Dimplecheek,
“I haven’t had a real good play
For more than ’most a week.”

Said Princess Dimplecheek, “My dear,
Your majesty forgets—
This morning we played grenadier
With grandpa’s epaulets.

“And yesterday we sailed to Spain—
We both were pirates bold,
And braved the wild and raging main
To seek for hidden gold.”

“True,” said the prince; “I mind me well—
Right hardily we fought,
And stormed a massive citadel
To gain the prize we sought.

“But if your ladyship agrees,
Methinks we’ll go upstairs
And build a waste of arctic seas,
And we’ll be polar bears.”

“Yes, if you’ll promise not to bite,”
Fair Dimplecheek replied,
Already half-way up the flight,
His highness by her side.

“Princess, on that far window-seat,
Go, sit thee down and wait,
While I ask nursie for a sheet,
Or maybe six or eight.”

A pile of sheets his highness brought.
“Dear princess, pray take these;
Although our path with danger’s fraught,
We’ll reach the polar seas.”

Two furry rugs his lordship bore,
Two pairs of mittens white;
He threw them on the nursery floor
And shouted with delight.

He spread those sheets—the funny boy—
O’er table, floor, and chair.
“Princess,” said he, “don’t you enjoy
This frosty, bracing air?

“These snowy sheets are fields of ice,
This is an iceberg grim.”
“Yes, dear, I think it’s very nice,”
She said, and smiled at him.

And then they donned the rugs of fur,
The mittens, too, they wore;
And Curlilocks remarked to her,
“Now you must roar and roar.”

Dimplecheek looked out from the cowl
Formed by her furry rug.
“I’m ’fraid of bears that only growl—
I like the kind that hug.”

The Very Merry Voyage of the Macaroni Man

This figure here before you is a Macaroni Man,
Who is built, as you may notice, on a most ingenious plan.
His skeleton, I beg to state, is made of hairpins three,
Which are bent and curved and twisted to a marvellous degree.
His coat-sleeves and his trouser-legs, his head and eke his waist
Are made of superfine imported macaroni paste.
And if you care to listen, you may hear the thrilling tale
Of the merry Macaroni Man’s extraordinary sail.
One sunny day he started for a voyage in his yacht,
His anxious mother called to him, and said, “You’d better not!
Although the sun is shining bright, I fear that it may rain;
And don’t you think, my darling boy, you’d better take the train?”
“Oh, no,” said he, “no clouds I see,—the sky is blue and clear,
I will return in time for tea—good-by, my mother dear.”