THE SYCOPHANTIC FOX AND THE A raven sat upon a tree, And not a word he spoke, for We'll make it any kind you please— Beneath the tree's umbrageous limb "J'admire," said he, "ton beau plumage," Two things there are, no doubt you know, A rooster that is bound to crow, A crow that's bound to roost; He tells the most unblushing lies. "Sweet fowl," he said, "I understand I hear you sing to beat the band Pray render with your liquid tongue This subtle speech was aimed to please He thought no bird in all the trees Could sing as well as he did. In flattery completely doused, He gave the "Jewel Song" from "Faust." But gravitation's law, of course, As Isaac Newton showed it, And elsewhere soon bestowed it. I blush to add that when the bird He said one brief, emphatic word, The fox was greatly startled, but The Moral is: A fox is bound To be a shameless sinner. And also: When the cheese comes round You know it's after dinner. But (what is only known to few) The fox is after dinner, too. HOW JACK FOUND THAT BEANS MAY GO BACK ON A CHAP Without the slightest basis For hypochondriasis, A widow had forebodings which a cloud around her flung, And with expression cynical For half the day a clinical Thermometer she held beneath her tongue. Whene'er she read the papers She suffered from the vapors, At every tale of malady or accident she'd groan; In every new and smart disease, From housemaid's knee to heart disease, She recognized the symptoms as her own! She had a yearning chronic To try each novel tonic, Elixir, panacea, lotion, opiate, and balm; And from a homeopathist Would change to an hydropathist, And back again, with stupefying calm! She was nervous, cataleptic, And anemic, and dyspeptic: Though not convinced of apoplexy, yet she had her fears. She dwelt with force fanatical, Upon a twinge rheumatical, And said she had a buzzing in her ears! Now all of this bemoaning And this grumbling and this groaning The mind of Jack, her son and heir, unconscionably bored. His heart completely hardening, He gave his time to gardening, For raising beans was something he adored. Each hour in accents morbid This limp maternal bore bid Her callous son affectionate and lachrymose good-bys. She never granted Jack a day Without some long "Alackaday!" Accompanied by rolling of the eyes. But Jack, no panic showing, Just watched his beanstalk growing, And twined with tender fingers the tendrils up the pole. At all her words funereal He smiled a smile ethereal, Or sighed an absent-minded "Bless my soul!" That hollow-hearted creature Would never change a feature: No tear bedimmed his eye, however touching was her talk. She never fussed or flurried him, The only thing that worried him Was when no bean-pods grew upon the stalk! But then he wabbled loosely His head, and wept profusely, And, taking out his handkerchief to mop away his tears, Exclaimed: "It hasn't got any!" He found this blow to botany Was sadder than were all his mother's fears. The Moral is that gardeners pine Harry Herbert Knibbs was born at Niagara Falls, October 24, 1874. After a desultory schooling, he attended Harvard for three years when he was thirty-four. "Somebody said I took honors in English," says Knibbs, "but I never saw them." He wrote his first book, Lost Farm Camp, a novel, as a class exercise. In 1911, Knibbs settled in Los Angeles, California, where he has lived ever since. In Riders of the Stars (1916) and Songs of the Trail (1920), Knibbs carries on the tradition of Bret Harte and the Pike County Ballads. High-hearted verse this is, with more than an occasional flash of poetry. To the typical Western breeziness, Knibbs adds a wider whimsicality, a rough-shod but nimble imagination. THE VALLEY THAT GOD FORGOT Out in the desert spaces, edged by a hazy blue, They were there, in the distance dreaming They were there, to his frenzied seeming, Davison's face was leather; his mouth was a swollen blot, His mind was a floating feather, in The Valley That God Forgot; Wild as a dog gone loco, Or sullen or meek, by turns, And whispered of pools and ferns. Gold! Why his, for the finding! But water was never found, Save in deep caverns winding miles through the underground: |