Works

She plucked a blossom fair to see;
Upon my coat I let her pin it;
And thus we stood beneath the tree
A minute.

She turned her smiling face to me;
I saw a roguish sweetness in it;...

Twain? Oh, yes, I've heard Mark Twain
Heard him down to Pleasant Plain;
Funny? Yes, I guess so. Folks
Seemed to laugh loud at his jokes,
Laughed to beat the band; but I
Couldn't rightly make out why....

The cruelty of P. L. Brown
(He had ten toes as good as mine)
Was known to every one in town,
And, if he never harmed a noun,
He loved to make verbs shriek and whine.
...

Mary had a little frog
And it was water-soaked,
But Mary did not keep it long
Because, of course, it croaked!

Little cullud Rastus come a-skippin' down de street,
A-smilin' and a-grinnin' at every one he meet;
My, oh! He was happy! Boy, but was he gay!
Wishin' 'Merry Chris'mus' an' 'Happy New-Year's Day'!...

The great millennium is at hand.
Redder apples grow on the tree.
A saxophone is in ev'ry band.
Brandy no longer taints our tea.
Dimples smile in the red-rouged knee.
The dowagers are no longer fat....

(with apologies to Frederic Taber Cooper)

I well recall (and who does not)
The circus bill-board hippopotamus,
whose wide distended jaws
For fear and terror were good cause.
...

Upon Bottle Miche the autre day
While yet the nuit was early,
Je met a homme whose barbe was grey,
Whose cheveaux long and curly.

'Je am a poete, sir,' dit he,...

Well, eight months ago one clear cold day,
I took a ramble up Broadway,
And with my hands behind my back
I strolled along on the streetcar track'
(I walked on the track, for walking there...

I am standing under the mistletoe,
And I smile, but no answering smile replies
For her haughty glance bids me plainly know
That not for me is the thing I prize;
Instead, from her coldly scornful eyes,...

I

Whenas, (I love that 'whenas' word,
It shows I am a poet, too,)
Q. Horace Flaccus gaily stirred
The welkin with his tra-la-loo,
He little thought one donkey's back...

So great my debt to thee, I know my life
Is all too short to pay the least I owe,
And though I live it all in that sweet strife,
Still shall I be insolvent when I go.
Bid, then, thy Bailiff Cupid come to me...

I have no heart to write verses to May;
I have no heart - yet I'm cheerful today;
I have no heart - she has won mine away
So - I have no heart to write verses to May.

O! fair, sweet Phyllis and sweet, fair May,
Which of you carried my heart away?
Who has my heart? I would like to know
Which was the guilty one of the two,
But I only know it was filched one day...