(_BY A FUTILITY RABBIT KEEPER_.)

There is a rabbit in the pansy bed,
There is a burrow underneath the wall,
There is a rabbit everywhere you tread,
To-day I heard a rabbit in the hall,
The same that sits at evening in my shoes
And sings his usefulness, or simply chews;
There is no corner sacred to the Muse--
And how shall man demobilise them all?

Far back, when England was devoid of food,
Men bade me breed the coney and I bought
Timber and wire-entanglements and hewed
Fair roomy palaces of pine-wood wrought,
Wherein our first-bought sedulously gnawed
And every night escaped and ran abroad;
Yet she was lovely and we named her Maud,
And if she ate the primulas, 'twas nought.

The months rolled onward and she multiplied,
And all her progeny resembled her;
They ate the daffodils; they seldom died;
And no one thought of them as provender;
The children fed them weekly for a treat,
And my wife said, "The _little_ things--how sweet!
If you imagine I can ever eat
A rabbit called Persephone, you err."