Short Poems

Hot cross buns! Hot cross buns!
One a penny, two a penny,
Hot cross buns!
If your daughters do not like them
Give them to your sons;
And if you have not any of these pretty little elves,
You cannot do better than eat them yourselves.

Now and then a friend and some sauterne,
Now and then a haunch of Highland venison:
And for Lotos-lands I'll never yearn
Maugre Alfred Tennyson.

Asleep within the grave
The soldiers dream, and overhead
The summer grasses wave.

My just demands soon grant or soon deny;
Th' one friendship shows, and th' other courtesy.
But who, nor soon doth grant, nor soon say no,
Doth not true friendship, and good manners know.

I NFANTEM tibi uir, tibi, Galla remisit adulter.
Hi, puto, non dubie se futuisse negant.

T HEYLIN uiderat in toga spadonem,
Damnatum Numa dixit esse moecham.

What Is In Thy Bosom? Pluck It
Out—Is It Genius, Is It Talent
For Something? Let's Have It.

The hound that men the Tumbler name,
When he a hare or coney doth espy,
Doth seem another way his course to frame,
As though he meant not to approach more nigh,
But yet he meeteth at the last his game,
And shaketh it until he make it die.

E'en as a mastiff fell, whom grewnd more fell
Hath tired, and in his throat now fastened hath
His cruel fangs, yet doth in vain rebel,
Though under him, and seeks to do some skath:
For still the grewnd prevails, and doth excel
In force of breath, though not in rage and wrath.

So have I seen ere this a silly fly
With mastiff dog in summer's heat to play,
Sometimes to sting him in his nose or eye,
Sometimes about his grisly jaws to stay,
And buzzing round about his ears to fly,
He snaps in vain, for still she whips away,
And oft so long she dallies in this sort,
Till one snap comes and marreth all her sport.