Tenors to right of him,
Trebles to left of him,
Discords behind him
Bellowed and thundered.
Oh the wild howls they wrought!
Eight to the end they fought!
Some tune they sang, but not,
Not the Old Hundred.
— Audre's Journal.
FILLING HIS PLACE.
Young Rip Van Winkle took into his head
To go on a cruise round the world, he said;
And in three years' time he would come once more,
And all would go on as it had before.
What a blank he left, alack and alack!
But the years went round till they brought him back.
And one lazy day in the last of June
Stood a sunburnt sailor, humming a tune,
And watching them play on the cricket-ground.
He was champion once of the country round;
But that brawny lad with the laughing face,
It was plain to see, was filling his place;
And with half a sigh he turned him away,
Saying, "It matters not, it is naught but play."
And he took the road to the old grist-mill,
Where his place, he knew, they could never fill;
For he'd miss him sore, the miller declared,
And his own right hand could be better spared.
The miller had found, on the day he sailed,
A good honest lad, who had never failed.
