The Bee's Bayonet (a Little Honey and a Little Sting)

Unearthed dogmatisms and bitumen sounds
Of the highest known pitch, resembling a whine
Or unrav'ling snarls of the Octopedine.
And thus they've exploded the silence complete
Tradition ascribes to the old Logothete[1 - From Logos (word) and Thete (Theodore)—The word of Theodore.]—
And so, in unleashing this Byzantine Pup,
They merit grave censure for digging things up.

THE PRICE OF PEACE

There's music in the Eagle's shriek;
There's ditto in the Lion's roar,
But discord marks the Bolshevik
Because the Bear doth growl no more.

The Dogs of War are out of tune,—
No harmony doth move the critters:
Unless they cease their fighting soon
The wounded whelps will have no litters.

Jerusalem! the Turk is spent!
The bagpipes took his breath, I think.
The Crescent now is badly bent,
And Allah's cause is on the blink.

The Bulgar too has shot his bolt,
And soon will quit—the poor pariah!
For now there's rumor of revolt
In Ananias and Sofia.

The Hun is playing with the Slav—
The Kremlin Mouse and Potsdam Cat;
But Cossack, too, can smear the salve,
And 'twixt them twain doth Peace fall flat.

Some day the Dove of Peace will swoop
With long, befigured bill, and put it
Against the Vulture-Kultur coop
And make the Prussian Junkers foot it.

MEN HAD HORNS THEN

Newspaper Item, Athens, Pa., July 29: The archaeologists who are traversing the Susquehanna River Valley, visiting sites of Indian villages and digging up aborigines and other relics, are said to have made a most astounding discovery on the Murray farm, near here, in finding the bones of sixty-eight pre-historic men. The average height of these men when their skeletons were assembled was seven feet, while many were much taller. Additional evidence of their gigantic size is found in the massive stone battle axes in their graves. The average age of these men is said to have been from thirty to forty. Another amazing point of this discovery is the allegation that "perfectly formed skulls were found from which horns grew straight out from the head."

The Homestead of Satan, they say, has been found
Near Athens, P. A., in a hole in the ground;
And people are flocking from Athens and Sayre
To view the remains of their ancestors there.

When Satan established himself in this zone
He found it distasteful to live all alone;
So he went to Towanda in quest of a bride,
And then tilled the soil till his seed multiplied.

So scores of young Devils at Murray's were born
That measured five cubits between hoof and horn.
Each one was equipped with a tail and two wings,
And asbestos garments at Nick's Sulphur Springs.

And that's why you find all their skeletons here
In good preservation: but isn't it queer
That Devils at Athens, the place of their birth,
Were the sole legatees of Hell upon Earth?

But Devils, like men, reach the ends of their ropes,
And have disappointments and unfulfilled hopes,—
So Satan discovered, too late we are told,
The climate at Murray's was too beastly cold.

His imps all contracted pneumonia and died;
So he buried them here in the Pit, side by side,
Near Athens, P. A., by the River Chemung,
Where they've been unmolested till now, and unsung.

And there their bones bleached, in the Sulphuric Pits,
Until Archæologists came with their kits
And made excavations, not thinking of harm,
But raising the devil at Rube Murray's Farm.

Now Satan's exposed and his ossified get,
(A few yet remain in the flesh, I regret!)
And Murray of Athens is living, I wot
On skeletons dug from this Hell-enic spot.

SUB ROSA

The Busy Bee, to gather honey, goes
Touching the clover bloom and then the rose;
An easy prey, the clover blossom yields
Its treasures garnered from the fragrant fields;
But all the sweetness that the rose adorns,
Protected is from theft by jealous thorns.
The Bee, ergo, in quest the flowers among,
Gets sometimes honey and gets sometimes stung.

WHITMANESQUE

The snow is falling on the hemlock boughs:
Courage, Comrade, Spring will come again!
The birds are leaving the evergreen trees,