and worries about me all night, till she's nearly mad; And if any kind person can think of any better way to make me happy we shall both of us be glad. BLUE AND RED: OR, THE DISCONTENTED LOBSTER. Permit me, Reader, to make my bow, And allow Me to humbly commend to your tender mercies The hero of these simple verses. By domicile, of the British Nation; By birth and family, a Crustacean. One's hero should have a name that rare is; And his was _Homarus_, but--_Vulgaris!_ A Lobster, who dwelt with several others,-- His sisters and brothers,-- In a secluded but happy home, Under the salt sea's foam. It lay At the outermost point of a rocky bay. A sandy, tide-pooly, cliff-bound cove, With a red-roofed fishing village above, Of irregular cottages, perched up high Amid pale yellow poppies next to the sky. Shells and pebbles, and wrack below, And shrimpers shrimping all in a row; Tawny sails and tarry boats, Dark brown nets and old cork floats; Nasty smells at the nicest spots, And blue-jerseyed sailors and--lobster-pots. "It is sweet to be At home in the deep, deep sea. It is very pleasant to have the power To take the air on dry land for an hour; And when the mid-day midsummer sun Is toasting the fields as brown as a bun, And the sands are baking, it's very nice To feel as cool as a strawberry ice In one's own particular damp sea-cave, Dipping one's feelers in each green wave. It is good, for a very rapacious maw, When storm-tossed morsels come to the claw; And 'the better to see with' down below, To wash one's eyes in the ebb and flow Of the tides that come and the tides that go." So sang the Lobsters, thankful for their mercies, All but the hero of these simple verses. Now a hero-- If he's worth the grand old name-- Though temperature may change from boiling-point to zero Should keep his temper all the same: Courageous and content in his estate, And proof against the spiteful blows of Fate. It, therefore, troubles me to have to say, That with this Lobster it was never so; Whate'er the weather or the sort of day, No matter if the tide were high or low, Whatever happened he was never pleased, And not himself alone, but all his kindred teased.