Yours truly at a rare moment in the Castle- an iron is a strange, exotic object in my hands.Envoi
SPEED, Ruthless Rhymes; throughout the land
Disperse yourselves with patient zeal!
Go, perch upon the Critic's hand,
Just after he has had a meal.
But should he still unkindly be,
Unperch and hasten back to me.
And, wheresoever you may roam,
Remember the secluded shelf
(Where, sitting in his Heartless Home,
The author chortles to himself),
There, in the distant by-and-bye,
You still may flutter back—to die.
Disperse yourselves with patient zeal!
Go, perch upon the Critic's hand,
Just after he has had a meal.
But should he still unkindly be,
Unperch and hasten back to me.
And, wheresoever you may roam,
Remember the secluded shelf
(Where, sitting in his Heartless Home,
The author chortles to himself),
There, in the distant by-and-bye,
You still may flutter back—to die.
Self-Sacrifice
FATHER, chancing to chastise
His indignant daughter Sue,
Said, "I hope you realize
That this hurts me more than you."
Susan straightway ceased to roar.
"If that's really true," said she,
"I can stand a good deal more;
Pray go on, and don't mind me."
Both poems are from Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes by Col. D. Streamer, who published this book in 1912 as the age of nonsense rhyme swelled with the waistlines. The second one might be rightly dubbed "The Spanking Poem" as it plays on the irony of what we we say versus what we do.
