BY A HALF-RED DENIZEN OF THE WEST.


SIR PELLEAS, lord of many a barren isle,
On his front stoop at eventide, awhile,
Sat solemn. His mother, on a stuel,
At the crannied hearth prepared his gruel.

"Mother!" he cried, "I love!" Said she, "Ah, who?"
"I know not, mother dear," he said, "Do you?
I only know I love all maidens fair;
My special maid, I have not seen, I swear.
Perhaps she's fair as Arthur's queenly saint;
And pure as she--and then, perhaps she ain't."

Turned then his mother from the hearth-stone hot;
Dropped the black lid upon the gruel-pot.
"I know'd a Qua-aker feller, as often as tow'd me this:
'Doan't thou marry for munny, but goa wheer munny is!'
She's a beauty, thou thinks--wot'a a beauty? the flower as blaws,
But proputty, proputty sticks, and proputty, proputty graws."

Then said her son, "If I may make so bold,
You quote the new-style poem, not the old.
The Northern Farmer whom you think so sage
Is not born yet. This is the Middle Age."

He said no more, and on the next bright day