POETRY.
THE MISCHIEF-MAKING KETTLE.
You picture it : an eight-day clock
The tale of hours repeating,
.And grandsire chuckling in his stock To think of Honey's beating; The flash of fire on oaken beam, And scarlet-cushioned settle, While on the hob a jet of steam Hissed softly from the kettle.
The thoughtless yeomen sowed and reaped, Or grumbled at the season, While, with a lid that bounced and leaped, The kettle hatched its treason. Keeping their punch and negus hot, Whene'er they made a night of it; Until a Greenock lad, called Watt, By evil chance caught sight of it.
Then, though some great thought nearly gained,.
His eager eye was troubling, The kettle, like a fool, maintained A conscientious bubbling; And, piping through a cheery spout, Its too suggestive ditty, With sundry spurts and puffs let out The secret,—more's the pity !
What next? The steam-jet shrieked aloud, And never craving pardon, Blew through the open door a cloud Across the quiet garden ; It drave this hideous noise and din, Where sunny brooks were gleaming, Across green fields and dells, wherein The shepherds lay a-dreaming.
The coach-guard owned his horn's defeat, Like Marsyas in the fable, Andlet the cracks of Watling Street Grow fat in stall and stable ; For all the tunes the old world sang, To music sweet and tender, Were drowned by that fierce roar that rang Across the kitchen fender.
And Pan himself can only sigh: " Ah I sink your shaft and tunnel, And where my sapling larches die, Show me the Scotcbman's funnel!
For you, who hurry breathless through A round of huckstering duties,
Who take Life thus, what eyes have yeti
To mark my wayside beauties?"
ALFRED CominAmr..
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