A Parody Anthology. Wells Carolyn

      AND this reft house is that the which he built,

      Lamented Jack! and here his malt he piled.

      Cautious in vain! these rats that squeak so wild,

      Squeak not unconscious of their father's guilt.

      Did he not see her gleaming through the glade!

      Belike 'twas she, the maiden all forlorn.

      What though she milked no cow with crumpled horn,

      Yet, aye she haunts the dale where erst she strayed:

      And aye before her stalks her amorous knight!

      Still on his thighs their wonted brogues are worn,

      And through those brogues, still tattered and betorn,

      His hindward charms gleam an unearthly white.

      TRILOBITE, Graptolite, Nautilus pie;

      Seas were calcareous, oceans were dry.

      Eocene, miocene, pliocene Tuff,

      Lias and Trias and that is enough.

      BYE Baby Bunting,

      Father's gone star-hunting;

      Mother's at the telescope

      Casting baby's horoscope.

      Bye Baby Buntoid,

      Father's found an asteroid;

      Mother takes by calculation

      The angle of its inclination.

      LITTLE bo-peepals

      Has lost her sepals,

      And can't tell where to find them;

      In the involucre

      By hook or by crook or

      She'll make up her mind not to mind them.

      OH, sing a song of phosphates,

      Fibrine in a line,

      Four-and-twenty follicles

      In the van of time.

      When the phosphorescence

      Evoluted brain,

      Superstition ended,

      Men began to reign.

      UPON a time I had a Heart,

      And it was bright and gay;

      And I gave it to a Lady fair

      To have and keep alway.

      She soothed it and she smoothed it

      And she stabbed it till it bled;

      She brightened it and lightened it

      And she weighed it down with lead.

      She flattered it and battered it

      And she filled it full of gall;

      Yet had I Twenty Hundred Hearts,

      Still should she have them all.

      BEHOLD the mansion reared by Daedal Jack!

      See the malt stored in many a plethoric sack,

      In the proud cirque of Ivan's Bivouac!

      Mark how the rat's felonious fangs invade

      The golden stores in John's pavilion laid!

      Anon, with velvet foot and Tarquin strides,

      Subtle Grimalkin to his quarry glides;

      Grimalkin grim, that slew the fierce rodent,

      Whose tooth insidious Johann's sackcloth rent!

      Lo! Now the deep-mouthed canine foe's assault!

      That vexed the avenger of the stolen malt,

      Stored in the hallowed precincts of that hall,

      That rose complete at Jack's creative call.

      Here stalks the impetuous cow with the crumpled horn,

      Whereon the exacerbating hound was torn

      Who bayed the feline slaughter-beast that slew

      The rat predaceous, whose keen fangs ran through

      The textile fibres that involved the grain

      That lay in Hans' inviolate domain.

      Here walks forlorn the damsel crowned with rue,

      Lactiferous spoils from vaccine dugs who drew

      Of that corniculate beast whose tortuous horn

      Tossed to the clouds, in fierce vindictive scorn,

      The baying hound whose braggart bark and stir

      Arched the lithe spine and reared the indignant fur

      Of puss, that, with verminicidal claw,

      Struck the weird rat, in whose insatiate maw

      Lay reeking malt, that erst in Juan's courts we saw.

      Robed in senescent garb, that seems, in sooth,

      Too long a prey to Chronos' iron tooth,

      Behold the man whose amorous lips incline

      Full with young Eros' osculative sign,

      To the lorn maiden whose lactalbic hands

      Drew albulactic wealth from lacteal glands

      Of that immortal bovine, by whose horn

      Distort, to realms ethereal was borne

      The beast catulean, vexer of that sly

      Ulysses quadrupedal, who made die

      The old mordaceous rat that dared devour

      Antecedaneous ale in John's domestic bower.

      Lo! Here, with hirsute honors doffed, succinct

      Of saponaceous locks, the priest who linked

      In Hymen's golden bands the man unthrift

      Whose means exiguous stared from many a rift,

      E'en as he kissed the virgin all forlorn

      Who milked the cow with implicated horn,

      Who in fierce wrath the canine torturer skied,

      That dared to vex the insidious muricide,

      Who let auroral effluence through the pelt

      Of that sly rat that robbed the palace that Jack built.

      The loud cantankerous Shanghai comes at last,

      Whose shouts aroused the shorn ecclesiast,

      Who sealed the vows of Hymen's sacrament

      To him who, robed in garments indigent,

      Exosculates the damsel lachrymose,

      The