LORD LOVELL he stood at his own front door,
Seeking the hole for the key;
His hat was wrecked, and his trousers bore
A rent across either knee,
When down came the beauteous Lady Jane
In fair white draperie.
“Oh, where have you been, Lord Lovell?” she said,
“Oh, where have you been?” said she;
“I have not closed an eye in bed,
And the clock has just struck three.
Who has been standing you on your head
In the ash-barrel, pardie?”
“I am not drunk, Lad’ Shane,” he said:
“And so late it cannot be;
The clock struck one as I enteréd—
I heard it two times or three;
It must be the salmon on which I fed
Has been too many for me.”
“Go tell your tale, Lord Lovell,” she said,
“To the maritime cavalree,
To your grandmother of the hoary head—
To any one but me:
The door is not used to be openéd
With a cigarette for a key.”
_Anonymous._
“SONGS WITHOUT WORDS”
I CANNOT sing the old songs,
Though well I know the tune,
Familiar as a cradle-song
With sleep-compelling croon;
Yet though I’m filled with music
As choirs of summer birds,
“I cannot sing the old songs”—
I do not know the words.
I start on “Hail Columbia,”
And get to “heav’n-born band,”
And there I strike an up-grade
With neither steam nor sand;
“Star-Spangled Banner” downs me
Right in my wildest screaming,
I start all right, but dumbly come
To voiceless wreck at “streaming.”
So when I sing the old songs,
Don’t murmur or complain
If “Ti, diddy ah da, tum dum”
Should fill the sweetest strain.
I love “Tolly um dum di do,”
And the “Trilla-la yeep da” birds,
But “I cannot sing the old songs”—
I do not know the words.
_Robert J. Burdette._