Mother Goose for Grown Folks

FANTASY

 
"I have a little sister,
They call her peep, peep;
She wades through the water,
Deep, deep, deep;
She climbs up the mountains,
High, high, high; '
My poor little sister,
She has but one eye!"
 
 
Rough Common Sense doth here confess
Her kinship to Imagination;
Betraying also, I should guess,
Some little pride in the relation.
 
 
For even while vexed, and puzzled too,
By the vagaries of the latter,—
Fearful what next the child may do,—
She looks with loving wonder at her.
 
 
Plain Sense keeps ever to the road
That's beaten down and daily trod;
While Fancy fords the rivers wide,
And scrambles up the mountain-side:
By which exploits she's always getting
Either a tumble or a wetting.
 
 
While simple Sense looks straight before,
Fancy "peeps" further, and sees more;
And yet, if left to walk alone,
May chance, like most long-sighted people,
To trip her foot against a stone
While gazing at a distant steeple.
 
 
Nay, worse! with all her grace erratic,
And feats aerial and aquatic,
Her flights sublime, and moods ecstatic,
She of the vision wild and high
Hath but a solitary eye!
And,—not to quote the Scripture, which
Forebodes the falling in the ditch,—
Doubtless by following such a guide
Blindly, in all her wanderings wide,
The world, at best, would get o' one side.
 
 
What then? To rid us of our doubt
Is there no other thing to do
But we must turn poor Fancy out,
And only downright Fact pursue?
 
 
Ah, see you not, bewildered man!
The heavenly beauty of the plan?
'T was so ordained, in counsels high,
To give to sweet Imagination
A single deep and glorious eye;
But then't was meant, in compensation,
That Common Sense, with optics keen,—
As maid of honor to a queen,—
On her blind side should always stay,
And keep her in the middle way.
 

JINGLING AND JANGLING

 
"Little Jack Jingle
Used to live single.
But when he got tired
Of that kind of life,
He left off being single,
And lived with his wife."
 
 
Your period's pointed, most excellent Moth-
er!
Pray what did he do when he tired of the
other?
For a man so deplorably prone to ennui
But a queer sort of husband is likely to be.
 
 
The fatigue might recur,—and, in case it
should be so,
Why not take a wife on a limited lease, O?
Grant the privilege, pray, to his idiosyn-
crazy,—
Some natures won't bear to be too closely
pinned, you see,—
And, at worst, the poor Benedict might
advertise,
When weary, at length, of the light of his
eyes,—
Or failing to find her, it may be, in salt,—
"Disposed of, indeed, for no manner of
fault,"
(To borrow a figure of speech from the
mart,)
"But because the late owner has taken a
start!"
 
 
I believe once before you have cautiously
said
Something quite as concise on this delicate
head,
When distantly hinting at "needles and
pins,"
And that "when a man marries, his trouble
begins";
But I don't recollect that you ever pretend
To prophesy anything as to the end.
 
 
Unless we may learn it of Peter,—the
bumpkin,
Renowned for naught else but his eating
of pumpkin;
Whose wife—I don't see how he happened
to get her—
Had a taste, very likely, for things that
were better:
 
 
Since, fearing to lose her, at last it be-
fell
He bethought him of shutting her up in a
shell;
By which brilliant contrivance she kept very
well!
What he did with her next, the old rhyme
does n't say,
But she seems to be somehow got out of
the way,
For the ill-fated Peter was wedded once
more,
To find his bewilderment worse than be-
fore;
"If the first for her spouse had but small
predilection,
Now 't was his turn, alas! to fall short in
affection.
 
 
And how do you think that he conquered
the evil?
Why, simply by lifting himself to her level;
By leaving his pumpkins, and learning to
spell,
He came, saith the story, to love her right
well;
And the mythical memoir its moral con-
trives
For the lasting instruction of husband*
and wives.
 

THE OLD WOMAN OF SURREY

 
"There was an old woman in Surrey,
Who was morn, noon, and night in a hurry;
Called her husband a fool,
Drove the children to school,
The worrying old woman of Surrey."
 
 
T was an ancient earldom over the sea,
And it must be now as it used to be;
Yet the sketch is of one I have known
before,—
The very old woman that lives next door.
 
 
One thing is unquestionable,—she 's
"smart,"—
As they say of an apple that's rather tart;
For her nearest friends, I think, would
allow her
To be, at her best, but a "pleasant sour."
There's a certain electrical atmosphere
That you feel beforehand, when she's near:
And—unless you 'ye a wonderful deal of
pluck—
A shrinking fear that you might be
"struck."
 
 
She moves with such a bustle and rush,—
Such an elemental stir and crush,
As makes the branches bend and fall
In the breeze that blows up a thunder-squall.
And yet, it is only her endless "hurry";
She's not so bad if she would n't "worry."
And, for all the worlds that she has to make.
If the six days' time she 'd only take.
 
 
You may talk about Surrey, or Devon, or
Kent,
But I doubt if a special location was meant;
It may sound severe,—but it seems to me
That a "representative" woman was she;
 
 
And that here and there you may chance
to trace
Some specimens extant of the race:
For a slip of the stock, as I've a notion,
Somehow "in the Mayflower" crossed the
ocean.
 

PICKLE PEPPERS

 
"Peter Piper picked a peck of pickle peppers;
And a peck of pickle peppers Peter Piper picked;
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickle peppers
Where's the peck of pickle peppers Peter Piper
picked?"
 
 
Poor Peter toiled his life away,
That afterward the world might say
"Where is the peck of peppers he
Did gather so industriously?"
The peppers are embalmed in metre,—
But who, alas! inquires for Peter?
 
 
In sun or storm, by night and day,
Scant time for sleep, and none for play,
Still the poor fool did nothing reck,
If only he might pick his peck:
And what result from all hath sprung,
But just to bite somebody's tongue?
Or,—Lady Fortune playing fickle,—
Get some one in a precious pickle?
 

HUMPTY DUMPTY

 
"Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall;
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall:
Not all the king's horses nor all the king's men
Could set Humpty Dumpty up again."
 
 
Full many a project that never was hatched
Falls down, and gets shattered beyond be-
ing patched;
And luckily, too! for if all came to chick-
ens,
Then things without feathers might go to
the dickens.
 
 
If each restless unit that moves among men
Might climb to a place with the privileged
"ten,"
Pray tell us where all the commotion would
stop!
Must the whole pan of milk, forsooth, rise
to the top?
 
 
If always the statesman attained to his hopes,
And grasped the great helm, who would
stand by the ropes?
Or if all dainty fingers their duties might
choose,
Who would wash up the dishes, and polish
the shoes?
 
 
Suppose every aspirant writing a book
Contrived to get published, by hook or by
crook;
Geologists then of a later creation
Would be startled, I fancy, to find a forma-
tion
Proving how the poor world did most wo-
fully sink
Beneath mountains of paper, and oceans of
ink!
 
 
Or even suppose all the women were mar-
ried;
By whom would superfluous babies be car-
ried?
Where would be the good aunts that should
knit all the stockings?
Or nurses, to do up the singings and rock-
ings?
Wise spinsters, to lay down their wonderful
rules,
And with theories rare to enlighten the
fools,—
Or to look after orphans, and primary
schools?
 
 
No! Failure's a part of the infinite plan;
Who finds that he can't, must give way to
who can;
And as one and another drops out of the
race,
Each stumbles at last to his suitable place.
 
 
So the great scheme works on,—though,
like eggs from the wall,
Little single designs to such ruin may fall,
That not all the world's might, of its horses
or men,
Could set their crushed hopes at the sum-
mit again.
 

SUNDAY AND MONDAY

 
"As Tommy Snooks and Bessy Brooks
Were walking out one Sunday,
Says Tommy Snooks to Bessy Brooks,
To-morrow will be Monday."
 
 
No doubt you are smiling at such a remark.
And thinking poor Snooks but a pitiful
spark;
But the words have a meaning, worth look-
ing for, too,
As I'll presently try and demonstrate for you.
 
 
'Twas a pity, indeed, in that moment of
leisure,
To dampen poor Bessy's hebdomadal pleas-
ure,
Suggesting that close on the beautiful Sun-
day
Must come all the common-place horrors
of Monday;
 
 
That he to his toiling, and she to her
tub,
Must turn, and take up with another week's
rub;
Yet a truth for us all, since the shade of
the real
Follows fast on the track of each sunny
ideal.
 
 
Now and then we may pause on Life's
pleasant oases;
But between lie the desert's grim, desolate
spaces;
And our feet, with all patience, must trav-
erse them still,
Reaching forward to blessing, through
bearing of ill.
 
 
Yet for Snooks and his Bessy,—for me
and for you,—
Comes a Saturday night when the wage
will be due;
And we'll say to each other, in ecstasy,
one day,
"To-morrow—the endless to-morrow—is
Sunday!"
 

THE MAD HORSE

 
"There was a mad man,
And he had a mad wife,
And the children were mad beside;
So on a mad horse
They all of them got,
And madly away did ride."
 
 
Sagacious Goose! Fresh wonders yet!
"What spell had power to help you get
Those seven-leagued spectacles, that see
Down to the nineteenth century?
 
 
"The mad world, and his madder wife!"
That, in your earlier time of life,—
Though quite demented now,?t is plain,—
Were sober, grave, and almost sane!
 
 
And all the tribes, a motley brood
Sprung into being since the flood,
With their hereditary bent
To cerebral bewilderment!
 
 
If some old ghost, precise and slow,
Who died a hundred years ago,—
Always supposing he himself
Has lain, meanwhile, upon the shelf,—
 
 
Things as they are might only see,
Surely his inference would be
A simultaneous bursting out
Of lunacy the earth about.
 
 
The world is mad; his wife is mad;
The rising generation's madder;"
And when a charter can be had,
Up to the moon they 'll build a ladder!
 
 
They caught a horse awhile ago,—
They called him Steam,—but he was
slow;
After the lightning then they ran,
Caught him,—and now they drive the
span!—1860.
 
 
P. S.—1870.
The great Pacific railroad's done;
They've poured two oceans into one:
Two shores with whispering cable tied,
And cut a path for ships to ride,
Where camel-tracks had used to be,
Through desert sands, from sea to sea.
Moon, quoth I? Faith, they 've made a
moon!
Leastwise, they 've thought one;¹ and so
soon
Upon man's whim his stroke succeeds,
And turns his dreams into his deeds,
Look sharply! for with word and blow,
They 'll swing one up before you know!
 
 
1882.
Why put a double P. S. in?
'T would need a daily bulletin
To tell how fast the craze goes on,
With Keeley and with Edison;
With things to eat, and things to travel,—
Bicycles spinning o'er the gravel,—
Great guns to simplify the fights,—
Suns outshone with electric lights,—
The whisper in the closet stirred
In sooth across the housetops heard,
And when the airy tangle tires
Earth to be veined with throbbing wires.
 
 
Women to physic and to preach,
And help the national bird to screech;
One man on Wall-Street curb to stand,
With twenty railroads in his hand;
Schools for the mass, effecting this,
That all may know what most must miss
Ah, who so sage that can pretend
To pre-sage of such tale the end?
 
 
I press the limit of my page;
So, haply, may this frantic age!