Punch (53.1867)

154

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

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[October 12, 1867.

AN IRREGULAR HARVEST ODE.

STROPHE.

The Harvest is over.

From Dantzic to Dover,

The Harvest is ended,

And not very splendid;

But still all ye rural and rustical peoples
Bouse the ringers to ring Triple Bobs in the steeples,
Not omitting the towers ;

For sunshine and showers
Have brought you again to the end of your labours,
You, and your hard-working classes, and neighbours.
So drink and be merry
With ale and with sherry,

Or anything handy,

Scotch whiskey or brandy,

But all things in order
On both sides the Border,

For each of us knows by experiment
’Tis well to be careful in merriment.

ANTISTROPHE.

Wheat, and barley, and rye,

On earth, and Ayr, and Skye,

Wherever the corn-crakes cry,

Wherever the partridges lie,

Sown and mown and cocked.

Sheaved and stooked and shocked ;

Beaped, and winnowed, and screened,
Ground and thrashed and gleaned ;

Bicked and stacked up high.

For the dusty miller to try.

And the Newark maltster to dry,

And all to eat and to drink by-and-by.

Oats, and beans, and peas,

From Thames, and Trent, and Tees,

And all the farms within the seas,

Scotia’s Lochs to the House of Keys.

“ Golden, golden grain,”

From hill and valley and plain.

And all the wide champagne,

Browned by sun and “ lodged” by rain,
With here a speck and there a stain,

By many a maid and many a swain
Piled in cart, and waggon, and wain,

' Crushing through thicket ancl spinney and lane,

To the great farm-yard with the creaking vane.
Golden, golden grain,

All to be gold again,

When the farmer takes the passenger train,

Or drives his mare with an easy rein.

Or trots on his cob to the market town,

And stands in the crowd in front of the “ Crown,”
And shows his samples, white and red.

To the miller who grinds the County bread ;

And barley bright,

A beerful sight,

To the maltster who covers his malting floors
With the crops that waved on heaths and moors,
And rustled and rolled,

A sea of gold.

On Weald and Wold,

On Wold and Weald,

On fen and field,

An average yield—

But if it is under.

This line is a blunder.

And must be repealed.

GREAT ANTISTROPHE.

Corn in sacks.

Corn in stacks,

Corn on staggering peasantry’s backs;

Corn in docks,

Corn in stocks,

Corn in barges passing through locks.

Corn from the north, corn from the south,

In spite of rain, and rust, and drouth,

Corn for everybody’s mouth ;

Corn from the east, corn from the west,

Corn from Bremen and corn from Brest,

From Biga, Bussia, and Trieste ;

With corn from every corner of earth.

From Pau to Pesth, from Prague to Perth,

Let us hope we are safe from dearth.

Come then and liquor up
Hundred and wapentake ;

Old age shall flicker up,

Strangers shall stop and take
In the guest-chamber,

Thirsty and sober.

Lucent and amber
Cups of October;

Drinking in house and hall,

Drinking to one and all,

Jolly with supper.

Good luck and benison—

Bhyme not in Tennyson,

But maybe in Tupper.

GRAND CHORALE.

So come, so come,

To the Harvest home ;

Come, if you like.

With fife and drum,—

There’s a Volunteer band
Always at hand,

And flags and banners
In most of the manors—

But all of you come
To the Harvest home,

And shout and sing
Till the rafters ring,

And cheer for the sake of the corn in ;

And dance all night,

(But don’t get tight)

And home by the train in the morning.

Then ho ! for the great mill-wheel,

And the eels that he on the bottom,

And ho ! for the fisherman filling his creel,

Id est, when he has got ’em;

And heigh ! for the whirring birds in stubble,

And ho ! for the hare that must dodge and double,
And hey ! for the day,

Not far away,

When the foxes find themselves in trouble.

ASSISTANT AND FINAL CHORALE.

By great barn-doors,

By granary floors,

By teams with bells and ribbons ;

Ye prices all,

Decline and Fall,

And leave us not to Gibbon’s !

By cereal fruits,

By bulbous roots,

By your last gathered load;

Rehearse, 0 friends.

When supper ends,

This most irregular Ode !

PBETTY WOBDS FOB PENNY BEADEBS.

The art of calling a spade a spade is not much cultivated seemingly
by writers in cheap newspapers. Here, for instance, is a passage from
a leader upon pheasant shooting from a contemporary

“ A pheasant, a goodly, and a beautiful sight it is to see the spangled exotic of
our woods come crashing down into the hazels or the ferns, like the broken end of
a rainbow, or a piece of damaged jewellery, while the echo of the shot rings through
the autumn woods. ”

Spangled exotic ! We wonder what our cook would say if we begged
her to roast for us a spangled exotic. Perhaps we ought to add, that
we desired it to be served with staff-of-life sauce. Still more we
wonder what would be the exclamation of our gamekeeper if, when
next we beat a covert, we told him that we hoped to bag ten brace at
least of broken ends of rainbows ! From the use of such fine language
one would think some of our newspapers import their tall talk from
America.

Another Episode in Insect Life.

The lower creatures in this country appear to be making wonderful
progress, to be developing rapidly. The common insects are becoming
mathematicians. An advertisement of a serial work on British Moths
informs us that Numbers Four to Ten contain the Geometers.