_by Henry Tyrrell._
_Illustration by E. V. Nadherny._
The trouble was, no word would rhyme with _month_.
And that was why my lovely birthday sonnet,
Meeting this obstacle, was wrecked upon it.
“Oh, fairest day of springtime’s fairest month”—
Thus I began, and there I stuck at “month.”
Her birthday is the first of May.
“Dog-gone it!”
I cried, “I can’t go on, now I’ve begun it—
Unless, perchance, I write of May the _one_-th.”
Then went I to my lady love, with all
The story of my tenderness and trouble—
Explained how words in Poetry must double,
And how my sonnet’s sweetness turned to gall
Because I couldn’t find a rhyme for “month.”
She laughed, and lithped the answer—“You’re a dunth!”
[Illustration: “_She laughed and lithped the answer—‘You’re a
dunth!’_”]