In contact, lo! the flint and steel,
By spark and flame, the thought reveal
That he the metal, she the stone,
Had cherished secretly alone.

There's a man with a Nose,
And wherever he goes
The people run from him and shout:
“No cotton have we
For our ears if so be
He blow that interminous snout!”

So the lawyers applied
For injunction. “Denied,”
Said the Judge: “the defendant prefixion,
Whate'er it portend,
Appears to transcend
The bounds of this court's jurisdiction.”

A spelling reformer indicted
For fudge was before the court cicted.
The judge said: “Enough—
His candle we'll snough,
And his sepulchre shall not be whicted.”

“One night,” a doctor said, “last fall,
I and my comrades, four in all,
When visiting a grave-yard stood
Within the shadow of a wall.

“While waiting for the moon to sink
We saw a wild hyena slink
About a new-made grave, and then
Begin to excavate its brink!

“Shocked by the horrid act, we made
A sally from our ambuscade,
And, falling on the unholy beast,
Dispatched him with a pick and spade.”

Megaceph, chosen to serve the State
In the halls of legislative debate,
One day with all his credentials came
To the capitol's door and announced his name.
The doorkeeper looked, with a comical twist
Of the face, at the eminent egotist,
And said: “Go away, for we settle here
All manner of questions, knotty and queer,
And we cannot have, when the speaker demands
To be told how every member stands,
A man who to all things under the sky
Assents by eternally voting ‘I’.”

Hail, holy Lead!—of human feuds the great
And universal arbiter; endowed
With penetration to pierce any cloud
Fogging the field of controversial hate,
And with a swift, inevitable, straight,
Searching precision find the unavowed
But vital point. Thy judgment, when allowed
By the chirurgeon, settles the debate.
O useful metal!—were it not for thee
We'd grapple one another's ears alway:
But when we hear thee buzzing like a bee
We, like old Muhlenberg, “care not to stay.”
And when the quick have run away like pullets

Fiercely the battle raged and, sad to tell,
Our corporal heroically fell!
Fame from her height looked down upon the brawl
And said: “He had n't very far to fall.”

The cur foretells the knell of parting day;
The loafing herd winds slowly o'er the lea;
The wise man homeward plods; I only stay
To fiddle-faddle in a minor key.

Some heaps of trash upon a vacant lot
Where long the village rubbish had been shot
Displayed a sign among the stuff and stumps—
“Hypochondriasis.” It meant The Dumps.

Blow, blow, ye spicy breezes—
O'er Ceylon blow your breath,
Where every prospect pleases,
Save only that of death.