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The Bashful Earthquake, & Other Fables and Verses

Chapter 14: THE SILVER LINING.
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About This Book

A compact collection of witty fables and light verses that personify animals, objects, and natural forces to produce playful moral and comic observations. The poems and short narratives range from brief epigrams to longer rhymed pieces, employing jaunty rhyme, absurd situations, and ironic twists to gently satirize human foibles and social pretensions. Illustrations accompany many pieces, reinforcing the whimsical tone and eccentric details while the overall mood alternates between sly humor, mild sentiment, and clever wordplay.

THE SILVER LINING.

hen poets sing of lovers’ woes,

And blighted lives and throbs and throes

And yearnings—goodness only knows

It’s all a pose.

I am a poet too, you know,

I too was young once long ago,

And wrote such stuff myself, and so

I ought to know.

 

hen poets sing of lovers’ woes,

And blighted lives and throbs and throes

And yearnings—goodness only knows

It’s all a pose.

I am a poet too, you know,

I too was young once long ago,

And wrote such stuff myself, and so

I ought to know.

I too found refuge from Despair

In sonnets to Amanda’s fair

White brow or Nell’s complexion rare

Or Titian hair—

Which, when she scorned, did I resign

To flames, and go into decline?

Not much! When sonnets fetched per line

Enough to dine.

So, reader, when you read in print

A poet’s woe—beware and stint

Your tears—and take this gentle hint

It is his mint.

When Julia’s “fair as flowery mead,”

Or when she “makes his heart-strings bleed,”

Know then she’s furnishing his feed

Or fragrant weed—

And even as you read—who knows?

Like cannibal that eats his foes,

He dines off Julia’s “heart that froze,”

Or “cheek of Rose.”