Part 3

If you cried enough to fill your hat, She wouldn't care; she was used to that.

Of the jam we had eaten, she would know; How we ran barefooted in the snow;

How we cried when they made us take our bath; How we tied the grass across the path;

How we bound together the cat and cur-- We couldn't deny these things to her.

She pulled her nose up off her chin And blinked at us with an awful grin.

And we almost died, becaze and because Her bony fingers looked like claws.

When she came on up to where we were, How could we be polite to her?

You needn't guess how she put us through. If you are bad, she'll visit you.

And when she leaves and hobbles off You'll think that she has done enough;

For the Old Bad Woman will and can Be just as bad as the Old Bad Man!

Valentine

This is the time for birds to mate; To-day the dove Will mark the ancient amorous date With moans of love; The crow will change his call to prate His hopes thereof.

The starling will display the red That lights his wings; The wren will know the sweet things said By him who swings And ducks and dips his crested head And sings and sings.

They are obedient to their blood, Nor ask a sign, Save buoyant air and swelling bud, At hands divine, But choose, each in the barren wood, His valentine.

In caution's maze they never wait Until they die; They flock the season's open gate Ere time steals by. Love, shall we see and imitate, You, love, and I?

A Photograph

When in this room I turn in pondering pace And find thine eyes upon me where I stand, Led on, as by Enemo's silken strand, I come and gaze and gaze upon thy face.

Framed round by silence, poised on pearl-white grace Of curving throat, too sweet for beaded band, It seems as if some wizard's magic wand Had wrought thee for the love of all the race.

Dear face, that will not turn about to see The tulips, glorying in the casement sun, Or, other days, the drizzled raindrops run

Down the damp walls, but follow only me, Would that Pygmalion's goddess might be won To change this lifeless image into thee!

Jesse Covington

If I have had some merry times In roaming up and down the earth, Have made some happy-hearted rhymes And had my brimming share of mirth, And if this song should live in fame When my brief day is dead and gone, Let it recall with mine the name Of old man Jesse Covington.

Let it recall his waggish heart-- Yeke-hey, yeke-hey, hey-diddle-diddle-- When, while the fire-logs fell apart, He snatched the bow across his fiddle, And looked on, with his eyes half shut, Which meant his soul was wild with fun, At our mad capers through the hut Of old man Jesse Covington.

For all the thrilling tales he told, For all the tunes the fiddle knew, For all the glorious nights of old We boys and he have rollicked through, For laughter all unknown to wealth That roared responsive to a pun, A hale, ripe age and ruddy health To old man Jesse Covington!

An Idyl

Upon a gnarly, knotty limb That fought the current's crest, Where shocks of reeds peeped o'er the brim, Wild wasps had glued their nest.

And in a sprawling cypress' grot, Sheltered and safe from flood, Dirt-daubers each had chosen a spot To shape his house of mud.

In a warm crevice of the bark A basking scorpion clung, With bright blue tail and red-rimmed eyes And yellow, twinkling tongue.