Diversions

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 92, 12 January 1935, Page 18

Diversions

TWINKLE, TWINKLE

Perhaps the classic (if one may so name it) example of verse mending deals with a famous nursery ditty:—

Twinkle, twinkle, little star— How I wonder what you are, Up above the world so high Like a diamond in the sky. When the blazing sun is gone, And he nothing shines upon. Then you show ycur little light— Twinkle, twinkle, all the night. Then the traveller in the dark Thanks- you for your tiny spark. He could not tell which way to go If you did not twinkle so. Revised Version— Scintillate, scintillate, globule - vivific. Fain would I fathom your nature specific. Loftily poised in the ether capacious Strongly resembling a gem carbonaceous. When torrid Phoebus removeth bls presence. Ceasing to lamp us with fierce incandescence. Then you illumine the regions supernal, Scintillate, scintillate, sempi-noc-turnal, The victim of lustreless peregrination Gratefully bails your minute coruscation. He could not determine his journey’s direction

1 But for your scintillitative protection. ° —From the “Choir.” n * » » 0 THE EIGHT-DAY CLOCK t At the very end of the great dim hall 5 With a cheerful face and two busy hands. . Upright in its case against the wall, 5 Correct as ever, the old clock stands Tick-tock! the eight-day clock

Morning. The children, late on their school-ward way, Glance up at the time as they hurry past “We slept a little 100 long,” they sav “Yes! but the old clock may be fast.” Tick-tock! Evening. The maiden, sweet as a'rose of June, Steals softly forth through the sunset

glow; A tryst, is due ’non th the rising moon - O surely the old clock must be slow! Tick-tock!. Night. Grand Fer sits in his easy-chair, And stirs the fire to ;t pleasant blaze: Hjs thoughts go back to the days that were— Those spacious, colourful, bygone days. Tick-tock!

Trusted friend of the Long Ago, Standing there in the great dim hail, Never a minute too fast, or slow. “Tempu.s fugit” it says to all. Tick-toek, tick-rock! The sun -may go wrong, but not that clock! —E. Matheson, in Chamber’s Journal. • * * JAN. TO DEC. I vow to be a better man, Beginning on the first of Jan. Nor will my resolution ebb When time has brought the first of Feb. Its impetus will take me far— Well, say until the first of Mar. My virtue won’t, I trust, escape Ere I have reached the first of Ap. Nor yqt my feet begin to stray Before at least the first of May. From sin will I be still immune When dawns the chilly first of June? | Alas! a sad backslider I I When grins at me the first July My resolutions in the morgue "Will lie before the first of Aug. My guarding- angel win have wept In anguish ere the first of Sept. And all my relatives l>e shocked, Disgusted by the first of Oct. They’ll cry. “What is he thinking of!” When I disgrace the first of Nov. j And treat me as a moral wreck Long, long before the first of Dee. —“Oriel” in the Melbourne “Argus.”