SUNDAY AND MONDAY. "As Tommy Snooks and Bessy Brooks Says Tommy Snooks to Bessy Brooks, No doubt you are smiling at such a remark, And thinking poor Snooks but a pitiful spark; But the words have a meaning, worth looking for, too, As I'll presently try and demonstrate for you. 'Twas a pity, indeed, in that moment of leisure, To dampen poor Bessy's hebdomadal pleas ure, Suggesting that close on the beautiful Sun day Must come all the common-place horrors of Monday; That he to his toiling, and she to her tub, Must turn, and take up with another week's rub; Yet a truth for us all, since the shade of the real Follows fast on the track of each sunny ideal. And our feet, with all patience, must traverse them still, Reaching forward to blessing, through bearing of ill. Yet for Snooks and his Bessy,- for me Comes a Saturday night when the wage will be due; And we'll say to each other, in ecstasy, one day, "To-morrow-the endless to-morrow - is Sunday!" CONCLUSION. DOUBTLESS I might go on to quote, Suffice it to have struck the vein, And shown some specimens of ore; If any seek for further gain, The mine still holds abundance more. A mental pickaxe and a biggin Are all you need to go to diggin', For, as the Swedish seer contends, All things comprise an inner sense; But seems a body, built to hide The soul, that straightway is supplied; One parting word, and I am gone : And bearing yet the ancient name, May, for this ancestress of mine, Claim place upon the page of fame ; — That not a bard of Saxon tongue More true to nature ever sung; |