"The devil you have!" the Marshal said
To the lady from over the Rhine;
And again she shook her flaxen head,
And civilly answered, “Nein!"
"Now what do you mean by shaking your head, And always answering 'Nine'?"
"Ich kann nicht Englisch!" civilly said
The lady from over the Rhine.
John Godfrey Saxe [1816-1887]
PYRAMUS AND THISBE
THIS tragical tale, which, they say, is a true one,
Is old; but the manner is wholly a new one.
One Ovid, a writer of some reputation,
Has told it before in a tedious narration;
In a style, to be sure, of remarkable fullness,
But which nobody reads on account of its dullness.
Young Peter Pyramus,-I call him Peter,
Not for the sake of the rhyme or the meter,
But merely to make the name completer,-
For Peter lived in the olden times,
And in one of the worst of pagan climes
That flourish now in classical fame,
Long before either noble or boor
Had such a thing as a Christian name,-
Young Peter, then, was a nice young beau
As any young lady would wish to know;
In
years, I ween, he was rather green,
That is to say, he was just eighteen,-
A trifle too short, and a shaving too lean,
But "a nice young man" as ever was seen,
And fit to dance with a May-day queen!
Now Peter loved a beautiful girl
As ever ensnared the heart of an earl
In the magical trap of an auburn curl,-
A little Miss Thisbe, who lived next door
(They slept, in fact, on the very same floor,
With a wall between them, and nothing more,-
Those double dwellings were common of yore),
And they loved each other, the legends say,
In that very beautiful, bountiful way,
That every young maid and every young blade
Are wont to do before they grow staid,
And learn to love by the laws of trade.
But (alack-a-day, for the girl and the boy!)
A little impediment checked their joy,
And gave them, awhile, the deepest annoy.---
For some good reason, which history cloaks,
The match didn't happen to please the old folks!
So Thisbe's father and Peter's mother
Began the young couple to worry and bother,
And tried their innocent passion to smother
By keeping the lovers from seeing each other!
But who ever heard of a marriage deterred
Or even deferred
By any contrivance so very absurd
As scolding the boy, and caging his bird?
Now, Peter, who wasn't discouraged at all
By obstacles such as the timid appal,
Contrived to discover a hole in the wall,
Which wasn't so thick but removing a brick
Made a passage, though rather provokingly small.
Through this little chink the lover could greet her,
And secrecy made their courting the sweeter,
While Peter kissed Thisbe, and Thisbe kissed Peter,-
For kisses, like folks with diminutive souls,
Will manage to creep through the smallest of holes!
'Twas here that the lovers, intent upon love,
Laid a nice little plot to meet at a spot
Near a mulberry-tree in a neighboring grove;
For the plan was all laid by the youth and the maid,
Whose hearts, it would seem, were uncommonly bold ones, To run off and get married in spite of the old ones.
In the shadows of evening, as still as a mouse,
The beautiful maiden slipped out of the house,
The mulberry-tree impatient to find;
While Peter, the vigilant matrons to blind,
Strolled leisurely out some minutes behind.
While waiting alone by the trysting-tree,
A terrible lion as e'er you set eye on
Came roaring along quite horrid to see,
And caused the young maiden in terror to flee;
(A lion's a creature whose regular trade is
Blood, and "a terrible thing among ladies,")
And, losing her veil as she ran from the wood,
The monster bedabbled it over with blood.
Now Peter, arriving, and seeing the veil
All covered o'er and reeking with gore,
Turned, all of a sudden, exceedingly pale,
And sat himself down to weep and to wail;
For, soon as he saw the garment, poor Peter
Made up his mind in very short meter
That Thisbe was dead, and the lion had eat her!
So breathing a prayer, he determined to share
The fate of his darling, "the loved and the lost,"
And fell on his dagger, and gave up the ghost!
Now Thisbe returning, and viewing her beau
Lying dead by her veil (which she happened to know),
She guessed in a moment, the cause of his erring,
And, seizing the knife, that had taken his life,
In less than a jiffy was dead as a herring!
Young gentlemen: Pray recollect, if you please,
Not to make assignations near mulberry-trees;
Should your
mistress be missing, it shows a weak head
To be stabbing yourself, till you know she is dead.
Young ladies: You shouldn't go strolling about
When your anxious mammas don't know you are out;
And remember that accidents often befall
From kissing young fellows through holes in the wall.
John Godfrey Saxe [1816-1887]
AGAIN I hear that creaking step!-
He's rapping at the door!--
Too well I know the boding sound
That ushers in a bore.
I do not tremble when I meet
The stoutest of my foes,
But Heaven defend me from the friend
Who comes but never goes!
He drops into my easy chair,
And asks about the news,
He peers into my manuscript,
And gives his candid views;
He tells me where he likes the line,
And where he's forced to grieve;
He takes the strangest liberties,-
But never takes his leave!
He reads my daily paper through
Before I've seen a word;
He scans the lyric (that I wrote),
And thinks it quite absurd;
He calmly smokes my last cigar,
And coolly asks for more;
He opens everything he sees-
Except the entry door!
He talks about his fragile health
And tells me of the pains
He suffers from a score of ills
Of which he ne'er complains;
And how he struggled once with Death
To keep the fiend at bay;
On themes like those away he goes-
But never goes away!
He tells me of the carping words
Some shallow critic wrote;
And every precious paragraph
Familiarly can quote;
He thinks the writer did me wrong;
He'd like to run him through!
He says a thousand pleasant things—
But never says, “Adieu!”
Whene'er he comes-- that dreadful man
Disguise it as I may,
I know that, like an autumn rain,
He'll last throughout the day.
In vain I speak of urgent tasks;
In vain I scowl and pout;
A frown is no extinguisher--
It does not put him out!
I mean to take the knocker off,
Put crape upon the door,
Or hint to John that I am gone
To stay a month or more.
I do not tremble when I meet
The stoutest of my foes,
But Heaven defend me from the friend
Who never, never goes!
John Godfrey Saxe [1816-1887]
HANS BREITMANN gife a barty,
Dey had biano-blayin;
I feiled in lofe mit a Merican frau,
Her name was Madilda Yane.
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