HUMOROUS POEMS. MISS KILMANSEGG AND HER PRECIOUS LEG. A GOLDEN LEGEND. "What is here? Gold yellow, glittering, precious gold?" TIMON OF ATHENS. Per Pedigree. To trace the Kilmansegg pedigree, It would n't require much verbal strain Tradition said he feathered his nest In the golden age of farming; And golden pippins the sterling kind Of Hesperus now so hard to find Made horticulture quite charming! A lord of land, on his own estate But his income would bear carousing; He gave, without any extra thrift, at will To each son of his loins, or daughter: 'T was said that even his pigs of lead, Made a perfect mine of his piggery. And as for cattle, one yearling bull Was worth all Smithfield-market full Of the golden bulls of Pope Gregory. The high-bred horses within his stud, When they stopped with the carts and wagons. Moreover, he had a golden ass, Sometimes at stall, and sometimes at grass, That was worth his own weight in money And a golden hive, on a golden bank, Gold! and gold! and gold without end! And reversions of gold in futuro. And his daughters sang to their harps of gold "O bella eta del' oro!" Such was the tale of the Kilmansegg kin Though certain people would wink and grin, That as money makes money, his golden bees That the golden ass, or golden bull, Her Birth. What different dooms our birthdays bring! Into this world we come like ships, Launched from the docks, and stocks, and slips, For fortune fair or fatal; And one little craft is cast away In its very first trip in Babbicome Bay, What different lots our stars accord! This babe to be hailed and wooed as a lord! One is littered under a roof Neither wind nor water proof, That's the prose of Love in a cottage,— A puny, naked, shivering wretch, The whole of whose birthright would not fetch, Born of Fortunatus's kin, To a prospect all bright and burnished: No tenant he for life's back slums He comes to the world as a gentleman comes To a lodging ready furnished. |