LITMIR.BIZ

      Come, now, who is this Pasadene

      That such a whirl of praises warrant?

      And is a rose

      Her only clo'es?

      Oh, fie upon you, Billy Florence!

      Ah, no; that's your poetic way

      Of turning loose your rhythmic torrents —

      This Pasadene

      Is not your queen —

      We know you know we know it, Florence!

      So sing your songs of women folks —

      We'll read without the least abhorrence,

      Because we know

      Through weal and woe

      Your queen is Mrs. Billy Florence!

      I am like the wretched seal

      Wounded by a barbed device —

      Helpless fellow! how I bellow,

      Floundering on the jagged ice!

      Sitka's beauty is the steel

      That hath wrought this piteous woe:

      Yet would I rather die

      Than recover from the blow!

      Still I'd rather live than die,

      Grievous though my torment be;

      Smite away, but, I pray,

      Smite no victim else than me!

      When, in the halcyon days of old, I was a little tyke,

      I used to fish in pickerel ponds for minnows and the like;

      And, oh, the bitter sadness with which my soul was fraught

      When I rambled home at nightfall with the puny string I'd caught!

      And, oh, the indignation and the valor I'd display

      When I claimed that all the biggest fish I'd caught had got away!

      Sometimes it was the rusty hooks, sometimes the fragile lines,

      And many times the treacherous reeds were actually to blame.

      I kept right on at losing all the monsters just the same —