class="line">Night, torn with terror, as we sail the deep,

THE ORPHANS

At five o'clock one April morn

I met them making tracks,

Young Benjamin and Abel Horn,

With bundles on their backs.

 

Young Benjamin is seventy-five,

Young Abel, seventy-seven--

The oldest innocents alive

Beneath that April heaven.

 

I asked them why they trudged about

With crabby looks and sour--

"And does your mother know you're out

At this unearthly hour?"

 

They stopped: and scowling up at me

Each shook a grizzled head,

And swore; and then spat bitterly,

As with one voice they said:

 

"Homeless, about the country-side

We never thought to roam;

But mother, she has gone and died,

And broken up the home."

THE PESSIMIST

His body bulged with puppies--little eyes

Peeped out of every pocket, black and bright;

And with as innocent, round-eyed surprise

He watched the glittering traffic of the night.

 

"What this world's coming to I cannot tell,"

He muttered, as I passed him, with a whine--

"Things surely must be making slap for hell,

When no one wants these little dogs of mine."

?

Mooning in the moonlight

I met a mottled pig,

Grubbing mast and acorn,

On the Gallows Rigg.

 

"Tell, oh, tell me truly,

While I wander blind,

Do your peepy pig's eyes

Really see the wind--

 

"See the great wind flowing

Darkling and agleam,

Through the fields of heaven,

In a crystal stream?

 

"Do the singing eddies

Break on bough and twig,

Into silvery sparkles

For your eyes, O pig?

 

"Do celestial surges

Sweep across the night,

Like a sea of glory

In your blessed sight?

 

"Tell, oh, tell me truly!"

But the mottled pig

Grubbing mast and acorns

Did not care a fig.

THE SWEET-TOOTH

Taking a turn after tea

Through orchards of Mirabelea,

Where clusters of yellow and red

Dangled and glowed overhead,

Who should I see

But old Timothy,

Hale and hearty as hearty could be--

Timothy under a crab-apple tree.

 

His blue eyes twinkling at me,

Munching and crunching with glee,

And wagging his wicked old head,

"I've still got a sweet-tooth," he said.

"A hundred and three

Come January,

I've one tooth left in my head," said he--

Timothy under the crab-apple tree.

GIRL'S SONG

I saw three black pigs riding

In a blue and yellow cart--

Three black pigs riding to the fair

Behind the old grey dappled mare--

But it wasn't black pigs riding

In a gay and gaudy cart

That sent me into hiding

With a flutter in my heart.

 

I heard the cart returning,

The jolting jingling