A Parody Anthology

The textile fibres that involved the grain
That lay in Hans' inviolate domain.
Here walks forlorn the damsel crowned with rue,
Lactiferous spoils from vaccine dugs who drew
Of that corniculate beast whose tortuous horn
Tossed to the clouds, in fierce vindictive scorn,
The baying hound whose braggart bark and stir
Arched the lithe spine and reared the indignant fur
Of puss, that, with verminicidal claw,
Struck the weird rat, in whose insatiate maw
Lay reeking malt, that erst in Juan's courts we saw.

Robed in senescent garb, that seems, in sooth,
Too long a prey to Chronos' iron tooth,
Behold the man whose amorous lips incline
Full with young Eros' osculative sign,
To the lorn maiden whose lactalbic hands
Drew albulactic wealth from lacteal glands
Of that immortal bovine, by whose horn
Distort, to realms ethereal was borne
The beast catulean, vexer of that sly
Ulysses quadrupedal, who made die
The old mordaceous rat that dared devour
Antecedaneous ale in John's domestic bower.

Lo! Here, with hirsute honors doffed, succinct
Of saponaceous locks, the priest who linked
In Hymen's golden bands the man unthrift
Whose means exiguous stared from many a rift,
E'en as he kissed the virgin all forlorn
Who milked the cow with implicated horn,
Who in fierce wrath the canine torturer skied,
That dared to vex the insidious muricide,
Who let auroral effluence through the pelt
Of that sly rat that robbed the palace that Jack built.

The loud cantankerous Shanghai comes at last,
Whose shouts aroused the shorn ecclesiast,
Who sealed the vows of Hymen's sacrament
To him who, robed in garments indigent,
Exosculates the damsel lachrymose,
The emulgator of the horned brute morose
That on gyrated horn, to heaven's high vault
Hurled up, with many a tortuous somersault,
The low bone-cruncher, whose hot wrath pursued
The scratching sneak, that waged eternal feud
With long-tailed burglar, who his lips would smack
On farinaceous wealth, that filled the halls of Jack.

Vast limbed and broad the farmer comes at length,
Whose cereal care supplied the vital strength
Of chanticleer, whose matutinal cry
Roused the quiescent form and ope'd the eye
Of razor-loving cleric, who in bands
Connubial linked the intermixed hands
Of him, whose rent apparel gaped apart,
And the lorn maiden with lugubrious heart,
Her who extraught the exuberant lactic flow
Of nutriment from that cornigerent cow,
Eumenidal executor of fate,
That to sidereal altitudes elate
Cerberus, who erst with fang lethiferous
Left lacerate Grimalkin latebrose —
That killed the rat
That ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.

    A. Pope.

MARY AND THE LAMB

MARY, – what melodies mingle
To murmur her musical name!
It makes all one's finger-tips tingle
Like fagots, the food of the flame;
About her an ancient tradition
A romance delightfully deep
Has woven in juxtaposition
With one little sheep, —

One dear little lamb that would follow
Her footsteps, unwearily fain.
Down dale, over hill, over hollow,
To school and to hamlet again;
A gentle companion, whose beauty
Consisted in snow-driven fleece,
And whose most imperative duty
Was keeping the peace.

His eyes were as beads made of glassware,
His lips were coquettishly curled,
His capers made many a lass swear
His caper-sauce baffled the world;
His tail had a wag when it relished
A sip of the milk in the pail, —
And this fact has largely embellished
The wag of this tale.

One calm summer day when the sun was
A great golden globe in the sky,