"I see her, proud to occupy my chair, To pour out tea, to smile around her there, While my false friends will praise her half-baked cake, And Bill will chuckle o'er each piece they take. And while his grief is lettered o'er my grave, He'll laugh, and eat, and show himself a knave."
Hast thou on some huge cliff, with oaks around, Heard the full terror of the thunder sound? Hast thou at sea, all breathless heard the blast Rolling vast waves on high whene'er it past? Then mayst thou form some thought of her dread ire Poured on the man to burn his soul like fire.
But soon the burst of anger all was o'er,-- And softened, she could speak of death once more. "And Susan Price can marry whom she will, And,"--so she argued, "will not marry Bill." One day she said,--"It is revealed to me That ere I die, a warning there shall be." Will looked, and saw her mind now wandered more, As thus she spake, than it had done before.
"Yes," she exclaimed, "before I leave this scene, Death will appear,--the warning intervene. Death will appear in this our quiet home-- A chicken without feathers will he come."
Fame spreads the great, and fame will spread the small, Fame gives us tears,--for laughter it will call. Fame spreads this whim,--this foolish crazy fear,-- The neighbors laughed, and told it far and near.
There dwelt close by, a restless heedless wight-- Mischief to him was ever a delight.-- He heard the story, and his scheme prepared, And what his brain had purposed, that he dared.
He from a rooster all his feathers tore, --Had he been learned in the Grecian lore Heard of the Cynic, old Diogenes, Who, lying in his tub, in dreamy ease, Said to the hard-brained conqueror of old time, With heedlessness to human wants sublime, When he inquired, "What shall for you be done?" "All that I ask, hide not from me the sun." He might have thought of him; and Plato's scowl, When in the school he hurled the unfeathered fowl, And said, ere murmuring lips reproof began, "There, Plato, is, as you defined, a man." But of the Greeks our wight had not a thought. Under his arm the fowl, all plucked, was brought, And forced to enter into Katy's door: Who spied him wandering o'er her sanded floor.
She looked upon him, and began to weep. Bill sat not far off on a chair asleep.