Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MUTATIS MUTANDIS, by MARGARET VAN S. RICE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MUTATIS MUTANDIS, by                    
First Line: By care and strife
Last Line: Down where (to say the least) it's summer.
Subject(s): Books; Marriage; Reading; Weddings; Husbands; Wives


BY care and strife
The good housewife
Has breakfast ready on the table;
Where is her lord?
Oh, vice abhorred —
His reason feasts upon a fable!

What cares that sot
For coffee hot
Or that his little wife is fretting?
He's drunk with wine
Of books lang syne,
The breakfast viands quite forgetting.

She knows (dear soul!)
The festive bowl
Has never been his sin besetting;
Nor does he roam
Away from home,
Nor cause her other vain regretting.

So when at night
His gas burns bright,
And (book in hand) he's soundly sleeping,
She looks at him
From distance dim
And, softly to his bedside creeping,

She never wakes,
But gently takes
That little book that is not "paid for" —
Reads "Leaves of Grass" —
Turns out the gas,
And — isn't that what wives are made for?

When "crack of doom"
With thundering boom
Calls forth this friend of bad Joe Miller,
He'll smuggle home
Each precious tome
From Gower and Chaucer down to Schiller.

With these for fuel,
A proper gruel
Old Nick will brew for this newcomer;
Then all shall know
His tale of woe
Down where (to say the least) it's summer.





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