The shock was great, but as my life
  I saved in the relentless strife,
  I knew lamenting was in vain,
  So patient went to work again;
  By constant work a day or more
  My little mansion did restore. 
  And if each tear which you have shed
  Had been a needleful of thread,
  If every sigh of sad despair
  Had been a stitch of proper care,
  Closed would have been the luckless rent,
  Nor thus the day have been misspent.”

      ANONYMOUS

  The Goose and the Swans

  A Goose, affected, empty, vain,
  The shrillest of the cackling train,
  With proud and elevated crest,
  Precedence claimed above the rest,
    Says she, “I laugh at human race,
  Who say Geese hobble in their pace;
  Look here—­the slander base detect;
  Not haughty man is so erect. 
  That Peacock yonder, see how vain
  The creature’s of his gaudy train. 
  If both were stripped, I’d pledge my word
  A Goose would be the finer bird. 
  Nature, to hide her own defects,
  Her bungled work with finery decks. 
  Were Geese set off with half that show,
  Would men admire the Peacock?  No!”
    Thus vaunting, ’cross the mead she stalks,
  The cackling breed attend her walks;
  The sun shot down his noontide beams,
  The Swans were sporting in the streams. 
  Their snowy plumes and stately pride
  Provoked her spleen.  “Why, there,” she cried,
  “Again, what arrogance we see! 
  Those creatures, how they mimic me! 
  Shall every fowl the waters skim
  Because we Geese are known to swim? 
  Humility they soon shall learn,
  And their own emptiness discern.” 
    So saying, with extended wings,
  Lightly upon the wave she springs;
  Her bosom swells, she spreads her plumes,
  And the Swan’s stately crest assumes. 
  Contempt and mockery ensued,
  And bursts of laughter shook the flood. 
  A Swan, superior to the rest,
  Sprung forth, and thus the fool addressed: 
  “Conceited thing, elate with pride,
  Thy affectation all deride;
  These airs thy awkwardness impart,
  And show thee plainly as thou art. 
  Among thy equals of the flock,
  Thou hadst escaped the public mock;
  And, as thy parts to good conduce,
  Been deemed an honest, hobbling Goose. 
    Learn hence to study wisdom’s rules;
  Know, foppery’s the pride of fools;
  And, striving nature to conceal,
  You only her defects reveal.”

      ANONYMOUS

  The Rats and the Cheese

    If Bees a government maintain,
  Why may not Rats, of stronger brain
  And greater power, as well be thought
  By Machiavellian axioms taught? 
  And so they are, for thus of late
  It happened in the Rats’ free state. 
    Their prince (his subjects more to please)
  Had got a mighty Cheshire Cheese,
  In which his ministers of state