Page 48 - Poetry-Family

Words are vain, and work is vainer
On this dark, despairing day.

Crashing, shrieking, swearing, scolding,
Loud the discord swells and grows;
Baby yells with cold and colic,
Johnny breaks his wretched nose.
Mother, sweet, serene, and patient,
In the usual way of life,
Now a fierce, unkempt virago,
Shrilly joins the swelling strife.
I have crossed the Eastern desert,
With a simoon at my back;
I have dared the burning prairie,
With a Sioux upon my track.
Fire, tempest, flood, and earthquake,
I have known them all, yet pray,
More than one—than all together—
Lord, avert a moving day!

—Queerquill (from a Victorian Scrap Album)

A Culinary Problem

We were busy one day in the kitchen,
I deep in some cook-book lore,
And he perched upon the table,
Driving a “coach-and-four.”

But when I had finished this sentence,
In a receipt I had found—
“Set on the stove and stir constantly,”
The driver looked around.

And leaving his play for a minute,
He whispered in my ear—
“How could anyone ‘set on the stove’
And not ‘stir constantly,’ dear?”

— Mary Chahoon (from a Victorian Scrap Album)

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