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  TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

  The contractions ’t and n’t for “it” and “not” have a space
  before and after them, so we see “is n’t” and “wer n’t” and “’t is”
  in the original text. These spaces are retained in this etext. The
  consistent exceptions in both the text and the etext are “don’t”
  “can’t” and “won’t”.

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  in the original text; these words are closed up in the etext.

  Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
  corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
  the text and consultation of external sources. All misspellings
  in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.




[Illustration:

      _If this little world to-night
        Suddenly should fall thro’ space
      In a hissing, headlong flight,
        Shrivelling from off its face,
      As it falls into the sun,
        In an instant every trace
      Of the little crawling things--
        Ants, philosophers, and lice,
      Cattle, cockroaches, and kings,
        Beggars, millionaires, and mice,
      Men and maggots all as one
        As it falls into the sun--
      Who can say but at the same
        Instant from some planet far
      A child may watch us and exclaim:
        “See the pretty shooting star!”_
]




  _The_ Bashful
  Earthquake

  & _Other_ FABLES
  and VERSES by
  OLIVER HERFORD
  with many pictures
  by _the Author_

  [Illustration]

  New York: Published by
  Charles Scribner’s Sons in
  the Autumn of MDCCCXCVIII




  _Copyright, 1898_,
  BY OLIVER HERFORD.


  University Press:
  JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.




_TO THE ILLUSTRATOR_


IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF HIS AMIABLE CONDESCENSION IN LENDING
HIS EXQUISITELY DELICATE ART TO THE EMBELLISHMENT OF THESE POOR
VERSES FROM HIS SINCEREST ADMIRER

  THE AUTHOR




CONTENTS.


                                                        PAGE

  THE BASHFUL EARTHQUAKE                                   1

  THE LOVESICK SCARECROW                                   7

  THE MUSIC OF THE FUTURE                                  9

  SONG                                                    11

  THE DOORLESS WOLF                                       12

  THE BOLD BAD BUTTERFLY                                  15

  CRUMBS                                                  20

  JAPANESQUE                                              21

  THE DIFFERENCE                                          22

  WHY YE BLOSSOME COMETH BEFORE YE LEAFE                  23

  THE FIRST FIRST OF APRIL                                24

  THE EPIGRAMMATIST                                       26

  THE SILVER LINING                                       28

  THE BOASTFUL BUTTERFLY                                  31

  THE THREE WISHES                                        35

  TRUTH                                                   37

  THE TRAGIC MICE                                         38

  ABSENCE OF MIND                                         40

  THE GRADUATE                                            41

  THE POET’S PROPOSAL                                     44

  A THREE-SIDED QUESTION                                  45

  THE SNAIL’S DREAM                                       51

  A CHRISTMAS LEGEND                                      52

  HYDE AND SEEKE                                          54

  IN THE CAFÉ                                             55

  THE LEGEND OF THE LILY                                  58

  THE UNTUTORED GIRAFFE                                   60

  THE ENCHANTED WOOD                                      64

  A BUNNY ROMANCE                                         68

  THE FLOWER CIRCUS                                       72

  THE FATUOUS FLOWER                                      77

  A LOVE STORY                                            80

  YE KNYGHTE-MARE                                         83

  METAPHYSICS                                             84

  THE PRINCESS THAT WAS N’T                               86

  THE LION’S TOUR                                         89

  THE FUGITIVE THOUGHT                                    93

  THE CUSSED DAMOZEL                                      97

  A GAS-LOG REVERIE                                      101

  CUPID’S FAULT                                          103

  ALL ABOARD                                             104

  KILLING TIME                                           105

  THE MERMAID CLUB                                       107

  A SONG                                                 109

  ANGEL’S TOYS                                           110

  THE REFORMED TIGRESS                                   112

  TWO LADIES                                             115

  TO THE WOLF AT THE DOOR                                119

  THE FALL OF J. W. BEANE                                121




THE BASHFUL EARTHQUAKE




      _Crime, Wickedness, Villany, Vice,
         And Sin only misery bring;
      If you want to be Happy and Nice,
         Be good and all that sort of thing._




[Illustration: The Bashful Earthquake]


          The Earthquake rumbled
          And mumbled
                And grumbled;
          And then he bumped,
          And everything tumbled--
                Bumpyty-thump!
                Thumpyty-bump!--
      Houses and palaces all in a lump!

[Illustration]

                  “Oh, what a crash!
                  Oh, what a smash!
      How could I ever be so rash?”
          The Earthquake cried.
                  “What under the sun
                  Have I gone and done?
          I never before was so mortified!”
                  Then away he fled,
                  And groaned as he sped:
      “This comes of not looking before I tread.”

      Out of the city along the road
      He staggered, as under a heavy load,
      Growing more weary with every league,
      Till almost ready to faint with fatigue.
      He came at last to a country lane
      Bordering upon a field of grain;
      And just at the spot where he paused to rest,
      In a clump of wheat, hung a Dormouse nest.

[Illustration]

      The sun in the west was sinking red,
      And the Dormouse had just turned into bed,
      Dreaming as only a Dormouse can,
      When all of a sudden his nest began
      To quiver and shiver and tremble and shake.
      Something was wrong, and no mistake!

      In a minute the Dormouse was wide awake,
      And, putting his head outside his nest,
      Cried: “WHO IS IT DARES DISTURB MY REST?”

[Illustration]

      His voice with rage was a husky squeak.
      The Earthquake by now had become so weak
      He’d scarcely strength enough to speak.
      He even forgot the rules of grammar;
      All he could do was to feebly stammer:
      “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid it’s me.
      Please don’t be angry. I’ll try to be--”

      No one will know what he meant to say,
      For all at once he melted away.

             *       *       *       *       *

      The Dormouse, grumbling, went back to bed,
      “Oh, bother the Bats!” was all he said.




[Illustration]

[Illustration: The Lovesick Scarecrow]


      A scarecrow in a field of corn,
      A thing of tatters all forlorn,
      Once felt the influence of Spring
      And fell in love--a foolish thing,
      And most particularly so
      In his case--_for he loved a crow_!

      “Alack-a-day! it’s wrong, I know,
      It’s wrong for me to love a crow;
      An all-wise man created me
      To scare the crows away,” cried he;
      “And though the music of her ‘Caw’
      Thrills through and through this heart of straw,

      “My passion I must put away
      And do my duty, come what may!
      Yet oh, the cruelty of fate!
      I fear she doth reciprocate
      My love, for oft at dusk I hear
      Her in my cornfield hovering near.

      “And once I dreamt--oh, vision blest!
      That she alighted on my breast.
      ’T is very, very hard, I know,
      But all-wise man decreed it so.”
      He cried and flung his arm in air,
      The very picture of despair.

             *       *       *       *       *

      Poor Scarecrow, if he could but know!
      Even now his lady-love, the Crow,
      Sits in a branch, just out of sight,
      With her good husband, waiting night,
      To pluck from out his sleeping breast
      His heart of straw to line her nest.

[Illustration]




[Illustration: The MUSIC of the FUTURE]


      The politest musician that ever was seen
      Was Montague Meyerbeer Mendelssohn Green.
      So extremely polite he would take off his hat
      Whenever he happened to meet with a cat.

[Illustration]

      “It’s not that I’m partial to cats,” he’d explain;
      “Their music to me is unspeakable pain.
      There’s nothing that causes my flesh so to crawl
      As when they perform a G-flat caterwaul.

      Yet I cannot help feeling--in spite of their din--
      When I hear at a concert the first violin
      Interpret some exquisite thing of my own,
      If it were not for _cat gut_ I’d never be known.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

      And so, when I bow as you see to a cat,
      It is n’t to _her_ that I take off my hat;
      But to fugues and sonatas that possibly hide
      Uncomposed in her--well--in her tuneful inside!”

[Illustration]




_SONG._


      _Gather Kittens while you may,
        Time brings only Sorrow;
      And the Kittens of To-day
        Will be Old Cats To-morrow._




[Illustration]

THE DOORLESS WOLF.


      I saw, one day, when times were very good,
      A newly rich man walking in a wood,
      Who chanced to meet, all hungry, lean, and sore,
      The wolf that used to sit outside his door.
      Forlorn he was, and piteous his plaint.
      “Help me!” he howled. “With hunger I am faint.
      It is so long since I have seen a door--
      And you are rich, and you have many score.
      When you’d but one, I sat by it all day;
      Now you have many, I am turned away.
      Help me, good sir, once more to find a place.
      Prosperity now stares me in the face.”
      The newly rich man, jingling all the while
      The silver in his pocket, smiled a smile:
      He saw a way the wolf could be of use.

[Illustration]

      “Good wolf,” said he, “you’re going to the deuce,--
      The dogs, I mean,--and that will never do;
      I think I’ve found a way to see you through.
      I too have worries. Ever since I met
      Prosperity I have been sore beset
      By begging letters, charities, and cranks,
      All very short in gold and long in thanks.
      Now, if you’ll come and sit by my front door
      From eight o’clock each morning, say, till four,
      Then every one will think that I am poor,
      And from their pesterings I’ll be secure.
      Do you accept?” The wolf exclaimed, “I do!”
      The rich man smiled; the wolf smiled; _I_ smiled, too,
      And in my little book made haste to scrawl:
      “Thus affluence makes niggards of us all!”

[Illustration]




[Illustration: The Bold Bad Butterfly]


      One day a Poppy, just in play,
      Said to a butterfly, “Go ’way,
      Go ’way, you naughty thing! Oh, my!
      But you’re a bold bad butterfly!”

      Of course ’t was only said in fun,
      He was a perfect paragon--
      In every way a spotless thing
      (Save for two spots upon his wing).

      But tho’ his morals were the best,
      He could not understand a jest;
      And somehow what the Poppy said
      Put ideas in his little head,
      And soon he really came to wish
      He _were_ the least bit “devilish.”

[Illustration]

      He then affected manners rough
      And strained his voice to make it gruff,
      And scowled as who should say “Beware,
      I am a dangerous character.
      You’d best not fool with me, for I--
      I am a bold, bad butterfly.”

      He hung around the wildest flowers,
      And kept the most unseemly hours,
      With dragonflies and drunken bees,
      And learned to say “By Jove!” with ease
      Until his pious friends, aghast,
      Exclaimed, “He’s getting awf’lly fast!”

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

      He shunned the nicer flowers, and threw
      Out hints of shady things he knew
      About the laurels, and one day
      He even went so far to say
      Something about the lilies sweet
      I could not possibly repeat!

      At length, it seems, from being told
      How bad he was, he grew so bold,
      This most obnoxious butterfly,
      That one day, swaggering ’round the sky,
      He swaggered in the net of Mist-
      er Jones, the entomologist.

[Illustration]

      “It seems a sin,” said Mr. J.,
      “This harmless little thing to slay,”
      As, taking it from out his net,
      He pinned it to a board, and set
      Upon a card below the same,
      In letters large, its Latin name,
      Which is--

          +---------------------------+
          |                           |
          |            ?             |
          |                           |
          +---------------------------+

                    but I omit it, lest
      Its family might be distressed,
      _And stop the little sum per year
      They pay me not to print it here_.

[Illustration: FINIS]

[Illustration]




CRUMBS.


      Up to my frozen window-shelf
        Each day a begging birdie comes,
      And when I have a crust myself
        The birdie always gets the crumbs.

        They say who on the water throws
      His bread, will get it back again;
        If that is true, perhaps--who knows?--
      I have not cast my crumbs in vain.

      Indeed, I know it is not quite
        The thing to boast of one’s good deed;
      To what the left hand does, the right,
        I am aware, should pay no heed.

      Yet if in modest verse I tell
        My tale, some editor, maybe,
      May like it very much, and--well,
        My bread will then return to me.




[Illustration: Japanesque]


      Oh, where the white quince blossom swings
        I love to take my Japan ease!
      I love the maid Anise who clings
        So lightly on my Japan knees;
      I love the little song she sings,
        The little love-song Japanese.
      I _almost_ love the lute’s _tink tunkle_
        Played by that charming <DW61> Anise--
      For am I not her old <DW61> uncle?
        And is she not my Japan niece?




THE DIFFERENCE.


      In the spring the Leaves come out
        And the little Poetlets sprout;
        Everywhere they may be seen,
        Each as Fresh as each is Green.
      Each hangs on through scorch and scoff
      Till the fall, when both “come off,”
      With this difference, be it said,
      That the leaves at least are Red.

[Illustration]




WHY YE BLOSSOME COMETH BEFORE YE LEAFE.


      Once hoary Winter chanced--alas!
      Alas! hys waye mistaking,
      A leafless apple tree to pass
      Where Spring lay dreaming. “Fie ye lass!
      Ye lass had best be waking,”
      Quoth he, and shook hys robe, and lo!
      Lo! forth didde flye a cloud of snowe.

      Now in ye bough an elfe there dwelte,
      An elfe of wondrous powere,
      That when ye chillye snowe didde pelte,
      With magic charm each flake didde melte,
      Didde melte into a flowere;
      And Spring didde wake and marvelle how,
      How blossomed so ye leafless bough.




[Illustration: The first First of April.]


      The Infant Earth one April day
      (The first of April--so they say),
