"Oh! oh! What a world of woe We flounder about in, here below! Oh dear! oh dear! It is too, too dull, down here! I haven't the slightest patience With any of my relations; I take no interest whatever In things they call curious and clever. And, for love of dear truth I state it, As for my Home--I hate it! I'm convinced I was formed for a larger sphere, And am utterly out of my element here." Then his brothers and sisters said, Each solemnly shaking his and her head, "You put your complaints in most beautiful verse, And yet we are sure, That, in spite of all you have to endure, You might go much farther and fare much worse. We wish you could live in a higher sphere, But we think you might live happily here." "I don't live, I only exist," he said, "Be pleased to look upon me as dead." And he swam to his cave, and took to his bed. He sulked so long that the sisters cried, "Perhaps he has really and truly died." But the brothers went to the cave to peep, For they said, "Perhaps he is only asleep." They found him, far too busy to talk, With a very large piece of bad salt pork. "Dear Brother, what luck you have had to-day! Can you tell us, pray, Is there any more pork afloat in the bay?" But not a word would my hero say, Except to repeat, with sad persistence, "This is not life, it's only existence." One day there came to the fishing village An individual bent on pillage; But a robber whom true scientific feeling May find guilty of picking, but not of stealing. He picked the yellow poppies on the cliffs; He picked the feathery seaweeds in the pools; He picked the odds and ends from nets and skiffs; He picked the brains of all the country fools. He dried the poppies for his own herbarium, And caught the Lobsters for a seaside town aquarium. "Tank No. 20" is deep, "Tank No. 20" is cool, For clever contrivances always keep The water fresh in the pool; And a very fine plate-glass window is free to the public view, Through which you can stare at the passers-by and the passers-by stare at you. Said my hero, "This is a great variety From those dull old rocks, where we'd no society."