Mother Goose for Grown-ups. Carryl Guy Wetmore

      In memory of other days,

      Dear critic, when your whispered praise

      Cheered on the limping pen.

      How short, how sweet those younger hours,

      How bright our suns, how few our showers,

      Alas, we knew not then!

      If but, long leagues across the seas,

      The trivial charm of rhymes like these

      Shall serve to link us twain

      An instant in the olden spell

      That once we knew and loved so well,

      I have not worked in vain!

      A noble and a generous mind

      Was Jack's;

      Folks knew he would not talk behind

      Their backs:

      But when some maiden fresh and young,

      At Jack a bit of banter flung,

      She soon discovered that his tongue

      Was sharp as any ax.

      A flirt of most engaging wiles

      Was Jill;

      On Jack she lavished all her smiles,

      Until

      Her slave (and he was not the first)

      Of lovesick swains became the worst,

      His glance a strong box might have burst,

      His sighs were fit to kill.

      One April morning, clear and fair,

      When both

      Of staying home and idling there

      In sloth

      Were weary, Jack remarked to Jill:

      "Oh, what's the sense in sitting still?

      Let's mount the slope of yonder hill."

      And she was nothing loth.

      But as she answered: "What's the use?"

      The gruff

      Young swain replied: "Oh, there's excuse

      Enough.

      Your doting parents water lack;

      We'll fill a pail and bring it back."

      (The reader will perceive that Jack

      Was putting up a bluff.)

      Thus hand in hand the tempting hill

      They scaled,

      And Jack proposed a kiss to Jill,

      And failed!

      One backward start, one step too bold,

      And down the hill the couple rolled,

      Resembling, if the truth were told,

      A luggage train derailed.

      With eyes ablaze with anger, she

      Exclaimed:

      "Well, who'd have thought! You'd ought to be

      Ashamed!

      You quite forget yourself, it's plain,

      So I'll forget you, too. Insane

      Young man, I'll say oafweederzane."

      (Her German might be blamed.)

      But Jack, whose linguist's pride was pricked,

      To shine,

      Asked: "Meine Königin will nicht

      Be mine?"

      And when she answered: "Nein" in spleen,

      He cried: "Then in the soup tureen

      You'll stay. You're not the only queen

      Discarded for a nein!"

      The moral's made for maidens young

      And small:

      If you would in a foreign tongue

      Enthrall,

      Lead off undaunted in a Swede

      Or Spanish speech, and you'll succeed,

      But they who in a German lead

      No favor win at all.

      Though she was only a shepherdess,

      Tending the meekest of sheep,

      Never was African leopardess

      Crosser than Little Bow Peep:

      Quite apathetic, impassible

      People described her as: "That

      Wayward, contentious, irascible,

      Testy, cantankerous brat!"

      Yet, as she dozed in a grotto-like

      Sort of a kind of a nook,

      She was so charmingly Watteau-like,

      What with her sheep and her crook;

      "She is a dryad or nymph," any

      Casual passer would think.

      Poets pronounced her a symphony,

      All in the palest of pink.

      Thus it was not enigmatical,

      That the young shepherd who first

      Found her asleep, in ecstatical

      Sighs of felicity burst:

      Such was his sudden beatitude

      That, as he gazed at her so,

      Daphnis gave vent to this platitude:

      "My! Ain't she elegant though!"

      Roused from some dream of Arcadia,

      Little Bow Peep with a start

      Answered him: "I ain't afraid o' yer!

      P'raps you imagine you're smart!"

      Daphnis protested impulsively,

      Blushing as red as a rose;

      All was in vain. She convulsively

      Punched the young man in the nose!

      All of it's true, every word of it!

      I was not present to peep,

      But if you ask how I heard of it,

      Please to remember the sheep.

      There is no need of excuse. You will

      See how such scandals occur:

      If you recall Mother Goose, you will

      Know what tail-bearers they were!

      Moral: This pair irreclaimable

      Might have made Seraphim weep,

      But who can pick the most blamable?

      Both saw a little beau peep!

      She was one of those creatures

      Whose