For when, as native instinct taught her, The mother set her brood afloat, They sank ere long right under water, Like any overloaded boat; They were web-footed too to see, As ducks and spiders ought to be! No peccant humour in a gander Brought havoc on her little folks,-- No poaching cook--a frying pander To appetite,--destroyed their yolks,-- Beneath her very eyes, Od’ rot ’em! They went like plummets to the bottom. The thing was strange--a contradiction It seemed of nature and her works! For little ducks, beyond conviction, Should float without the help of corks: Great Johnson it bewildered him! To hear of chicks that could not swim. Poor Mrs. Bond! what could she do But change the breed--and she tried divers, Which dived as all seemed born to do; No little ones were e’er survivors-- Like those that copy gems, I’m thinking, They all were given to die-sinking! In vain their downy coats were shorn: They floundered still;--Batch after batch went! The little fools seemed only born And hatched for nothing but a hatchment! Whene’er they launched--oh sight of wonder! Like fires the water “got them under!” No woman ever gave their lucks A better chance than Mrs. Bond did; At last quite out of heart and ducks, She gave her pond up and desponded; For Death among the water lilies, Cried “_Duc_ ad me,” to all her dillies. But though resolved to breed no more, She brooded often on this riddle-- Alas! twas darker than before! At last, about the summer’s middle, What Johnson, Mrs. Bond, or none did, To clear the matter up the sun did! The thirsty Sirius, dog-like, drank So deep his furious tongue to cool, The shallow waters sank and sank, And lo, from out the wasted pool, Too hot to hold them any longer, There crawled some eels as big as conger! I wish all folks would look a bit, In such a case below the surface; But when the eels were caught and split By Mrs. Bond, just think of _her_ face, In each inside at once to spy A duckling turned to giblet pie! The sight at once explained the case, Making the Dame look rather silly, The tenants of that _Eely Place_ Had found the way to _Pick a dilly_, And so by under-water suction, Had wrought the little ducks abduction. DIBDIN MODERNIZED. I _steamed_ from the Downs in the Nancy, My jib how she _smoked_ through the breeze. She’s a vessel as tight to my fancy As ever _boil’d_ through the salt seas. * * * * * When up the _flue_ the sailor goes And ventures on the _pot_, The landsman, he no better knows, But thinks hard is his lot.