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Artful Anticks

Chapter 5: The Gifted Ant.
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About This Book

A collection of short, humorous poems and light fables that animate animals, children, and fairies to expose human foibles through playful rhyme and gentle irony. Pieces range from brief narrative verses to comic monologues and a short stage piece, typically concluding with a witty reversal or moral sting. Imagery moves between domestic detail and fanciful incident, and the poems vary in meter and length to keep tone brisk. Overall the work favors whimsical satire, clever wordplay, and anthropomorphic scenarios intended to amuse while lightly admonishing readers about pride, industry, and pretension.

The Gifted Ant.

A gifted ant, who could no more
Than keep starvation from her door,
Once cast about that she might find
An occupation to her mind.
An ant with active hands and feet
Can, as a rule, make both ends meet.
Unhappily, this was not quite
The case with her of whom I write.

“Since I am gifted,” she’d explain,
“I ought to exercise my brain.
The only thing for me, it’s clear,
Is a professional career!”

But no profession could she find,
Until one day there crossed her mind
The proverb bidding sluggards gaze
Upon the ant to learn her ways.
“The very thing!” she cried. “Hurray!
I’ll advertise without delay.
Things are come to a pretty pass,
If I can’t teach a sluggard class!”
She set to work without delay,
And wrote some cards that very day;
And hung them in the grass—a plan
To catch the sluggard’s eye. They ran

As follows:

Sluggards who desire
An education to acquire
Will find it well to call to-day
Upon Professor Ant, B. A.
Her Sluggard Class, she begs to state,
Reopens at an early date
With several vacancies—a chance
Exceptional—
Terms—In Advance.