| Night, sable goddess, from her ebon throne
Had cast her mantle like an old, black sheepskin over all the earth; The watch-dog lay beneath the porch and gnawed a bone, The tired farmer snored for all that he was worth. High on a limb the wide-eyed owlet sat and screeched, Although his high, falsetto voice was out of tune, And shrieked in shivering, ghostly accents till it reached Up to the cold, refulgent, round-faced moon. Upon the shore that lined the Verdi's peaceful way A solitary bullfrog droned his sullen note, As if the bugs and critters he had eaten through the day, Resentful like, were calling from his throat. The playful pollywog doth now produce encircling rings, That on the river's rugged shore in angry billows break; Anon the speckled rooster cranes his neck and flaps his wings And bids the slumb'ring, snoozing, sleepy earth awake. |
Verdigris Valley Verse
Albert Stroud
(Coffeyville, Kansas: The Journal Press. 1917)
Page 25
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