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IV.

She dropt the goose, and caught the pelf, And ran to tell her neighbors;

And blessed herself, and cursed herself,

And rested from her labors.

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And feeding high, and living soft,
Grew plump and able-bodied;
Until the grave churchwarden doffed,
The parson smirked and nodded.

VI.

So sitting, served by man and maid,
She felt her heart grow prouder:
But ah! the more the white goose laid,
It clacked and cackled louder.

VII.

It cluttered here, it chuckled there;
It stirred the old wife's mettle:
She shifted in her elbow-chair,

And hurled the pan and kettle.

VIII.

'A quinsy choke thy cursed note! Then waxed her anger stronger.

"Go, take the goose, and wring her throat, I will not bear it longer."

IX.

Then yelped the cur, and yawled the cat;
Ran Gaffer, stumbled Gammer.

The goose flew this way and flew that,
And filled the house with clamor.

X.

As head and heels upon the floor
They floundered all together,
There strode a stranger to the door,
And it was windy weather:

XI.

He took the goose upon his arm,
He uttered words of scorning;
"So keep you cold, or keep you warm,
It is a stormy morning."

XII.

The wild wind rang from park and plain,

And round the attics rumbled,

Till all the tables danced again,

And half the chimneys tumbled.

XIII.

The glass blew in, the fire blew out,
The blast was hard and harder.

Her

cap blew off, her gown blew up,

And a whirlwind cleared the larder;

XIV.

And while on all sides breaking loose

Her household fled the danger,

Quoth she,

"The Devil take the goose,

And God forget the stranger!"

THE EPIC.

Ar Francis Allen's on the Christmas-eve,

The game of forfeits done

the girls all kissed

Beneath the sacred bush and past away
The parson Holmes, the poet Everard Hall,
The host and I, sat round the wassail-bowl,
Then half-way ebbed: and there we held a talk,
How all the old honor had from Christmas gone,
Or gone, or dwindled down to some odd games
In some odd nooks like this; till I, tired out
With cutting eights that day upon the pond,
Where, three times slipping from the outer edge,
I bumped the ice into three several stars,
Fell in a doze; and half-awake I heard

The parson taking wide and wider sweeps,
Now harping on the church-commissioners,
Now hawking at Geology and schism;
Until I woke, and found him settled down
Upon the general decay of faith

Right through the world" at home was little left,
And none abroad: there was no anchor, none,
To hold by." Francis, laughing, clapt his hand
On Everard's shoulder, with "I hold by him."

"And I," quoth Everard, " by the wassail-bowl."

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"I

'Why yes," I said, "we knew your gift that way

At college: but another which you had,

I mean of verse, (for so we held it then,)

What came of that?" "You know," said Frank, "he hung His epic of King Arthur in the fire!"

And then to me demanding why? "O, sir,

He thought that nothing new was said, or else
Something so said 't was nothing that a truth
Looks freshest in the fashion of the day:

God knows he has a mint of reasons: ask.

It pleased me well enough." "Nay, nay," said Hall, Why take the style of those heroic times?

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For nature brings not back the Mastodon,
Nor we those times; and why should any man
Remodel models? these twelve books of mine
Were faint Homeric echoes, nothing worth,
Mere chaff and draff, much better burnt."

" But I,"

Said Francis, "picked the eleventh from this hearth,

And have it keep a thing, its use will come.

I hoard it as a sugar-plum for Holmes."

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