GREGORY PARABLE, LL.D. A leafy cot, where no dry rot Had ever been by tenant seen, Where ivy clung and wopses stung, Where beeses hummed and drummed and strummed, Where treeses grew and breezes blew-- A thatchy roof, quite waterproof, Where countless herds of dicky-birds Built twiggy beds to lay their heads (My mother begs I'll make it "eggs," But though it's true that dickies do Construct a nest with chirpy noise, With view to rest their eggy joys, 'Neath eavy sheds, yet eggs and beds, As I explain to her in vain Five hundred times, are faulty rhymes). 'Neath such a cot, built on a plot Of freehold land, dwelt MARY and Her worthy father, named by me GREGORY PARABLE, LL.D. He knew no guile, this simple man, No worldly wile, or plot, or plan, Except that plot of freehold land That held the cot, and MARY, and Her worthy father, named by me GREGORY PARABLE, LL.D. A grave and learned scholar he, Yet simple as a child could be. He'd shirk his meal to sit and cram A goodish deal of Eton Gram. No man alive could him nonplus With vocative of _filius_; No man alive more fully knew The passive of a verb or two; None better knew the worth than he Of words that end in _b_, _d_, _t_. Upon his green in early spring He might be seen endeavouring To understand the hooks and crooks Of HENRY and his Latin books; Or calling for his "Cæsar on The Gallic War," like any don; Or, p'raps, expounding unto all How mythic BALBUS built a wall. So lived the sage who's named by me GREGORY PARABLE, LL.D. To him one autumn day there came A lovely youth of mystic name: He took a lodging in the house, And fell a-dodging snipe and grouse, For, oh! that mild scholastic one Let shooting for a single gun. By three or four, when sport was o'er, The Mystic One laid by his gun, And made sheep's eyes of giant size, [Illustration] Till after tea, at MARY P. And MARY P. (so kind was she), She, too, made eyes of giant size, Whose every dart right through the heart Appeared to run that Mystic One. The Doctor's whim engrossing him, He did not know they flirted so. For, save at tea, "_musa musæ_," As I'm advised, monopolised And rendered blind his giant mind. But looking up above his cup One afternoon, he saw them spoon. "Aha!" quoth he, "you naughty lass! As quaint old OVID says, 'Amas!'"