"You see," Father William replied, "in my youth-- 'Tis a thing I must ever regret-- It worried me so to keep up with the truth That my nose has a flush on it yet." "You are old," said the youth, "and I grieve to detect A feverish gleam in your eye; Yet I'm willing to give you full time to reflect. Now, pray, can you answer me why?" "Alas," said the sage, "I was tempted to choose Me a wife in my earlier years, And the grief, when I think that she didn't refuse, Has reddened my eyelids with tears." "You are old, Father William," the young man said, "And you never touch wine, you declare, Yet you sleep with your feet at the head of the bed; Now answer me that if you dare." "In my youth," said the sage, "I was told it was true, That the world turned around in the night; I cherished the lesson, my boy, and I knew That at morning my feet would be right." "You are old," said the youth, "and it grieved me to note, As you recently fell through the door, That 'full as a goose' had been chalked on your coat; Now answer me that I implore." "My boy," said the sage, "I have answered you fair, While you stuck to the point in dispute, But this is a personal matter, and there Is my answer--the toe of my boot." WHAT THE WIND SAID 'I muse to-day, in a listless way, In the gleam of a summer land; I close my eyes as a lover may At the touch of his sweetheart's hand, And I hear these things in the whisperings Of the zephyrs round me fanned':-- I am the Wind, and I rule mankind, And I hold a sovereign reign Over the lands, as God designed, And the waters they contain: Lo! the bound of the wide world round Falleth in my domain! I was born on a stormy morn In a kingdom walled with snow, Whose crystal cities laugh to scorn The proudest the world can show; And the daylight's glare is frozen there In the breath of the blasts that blow. Life to me was a jubilee From the first of my youthful days: Clinking my icy toys with glee-- Playing my childish plays; Filling my hands with the silver sands To scatter a thousand ways: Chasing the flakes that the Polar shakes From his shaggy coat of white, Or hunting the trace of the track he makes And sweeping it from sight, As he turned to glare from the slippery stair Of the iceberg's farthest height. Till I grew so strong that I strayed ere long From my home of ice and chill; With an eager heart and a merry song I traveled the snows until I heard the thaws in the ice-crag's jaws Crunched with a hungry will; And the angry crash of the waves that dash Themselves on the jagged shore Where the splintered masts of the ice-wrecks flash, And the frightened breakers roar In wild unrest on the ocean's breast For a thousand leagues or more.