SELECTED POETRY.

Cromwell Argus, Volume V, Issue 224, 24 February 1874, Page 7

SELECTED POETRY.

M 11) N I G.H T SNORING. Once upon a midnight dreary, while 1 floundered, weak and wea y, On an awful nobby mattrass, feeling very lame and sore; ■While promiscuously tumbling, suddenly I heard a rumbling, Like a tipsy earthquake grumbling somewhere near my chamber floor, Or a herd of bulls a-practising improvements on their roar. Only that and nothing more ! Ah! distinctly I remember, 'twas a hot night in December, And my chum in bed beside me fell asleep an hour before ; He slept soundly as a baby, and at first I was a gaby, For 1 never thought that maybe he might perpetrate a snore— That the individual who lay by me might perpetrate a snore. That it was, and nothing more ! There he lay, and groaned and grunted, and I own I felt affronted ; And yet with patience quite enormous I did quietly implore That he wouldn't snore, but cease it, and if nothing else would ease it, Take his windpipe out and grease it—that would surely stop the snore ; But he did it all the more !

And he beetled no imploring, but my patience still kept boring, Weaving gasps, aid chokes, and gurglings in the fabric of bis snore ; And it drove me to distraction, for I couldn't sleep a, fraction, With his quintuple back-action reflex sympathetic snore; Why ! a constant tooth-extraction wouldn't make me feel so sore As that horrifying snore ! So with energy astcunling I resorted unto pounding, And r punched him, and I beat him like a full-drnm-major's corps ; But it di In't stop his snoring—he regarded it encoring, And complacently kept snoring nasal home-rum by the score, Till he swelled the dulcet chorus fifty thousand notes or more In one evei lasting snore ! Then, despairingly, I took him out of bed, and having shook him, Laid him a la mode spread-eagle on the carpet nor the door ; Rut changing his position didn't offer opposition, For it favoured the condition for developing his snore, And it ninde it so much louder, I'm inclined to think I swore. Quoth I, raving, " Darn that snore !"

And in'anger and vexation, with tremendous desperation, T danced upon the fellow as he lay upon the floor ; But this made his music jerky, like the gobbling of a turkey, And through the darkness murky it resounded more and more ; So my dancing was but bootless to eradicate his snore. His unconscious snore ! Then, with madness despairing, I exhausted all my swearing, And 1 flung the mattrass upon him as he sprawled upon the floor ; And I left him there till morning, as a melancholy warning Of the sad results of scorning tender feelings with a snore ; But I a3ked a final question—" Will you never stop that snore ?" And its echo, as before, seemed to answer—■" Nevermore !" — New Zealand Herald.