by
Louisa May Alcott
Long ago in a poultry yard
One dull November morn,
Beneath a motherly soft wing
A little goose was born.
Who straightway peeped out of the shell
To view the world beyond,
Longing at once to sally forth
And paddle in the pond.
"Oh! be not rash," her father said,
A mild Socratic bird;
Her mother begged her not to stray
With many a warning word.
But little goosey was perverse,
And eagerly did cry,
"I've got a lovely pair of wings,
Of course I ought to fly."
In vain parental cacklings,
In vain the cold sky's frown,
Ambitious goosey tried to soar,
But always tumbled down.
The farmyard jeered at her attempts,
The peacocks screamed, "Oh fie!
You're only a domestic goose,
So don't pretend to fly."
Great cock-a-doodle from his perch
Crowed daily loud and clear,
"Stay in the puddle, foolish bird,
That is your proper sphere,"
The ducks and hens said, one and all,
In gossip by the pool,
"Our children never play such pranks;
My dear, that fowl's a fool."
The owls came out and flew about,
Hooting above the rest,
"No useful egg was ever hatched
From transcendental nest."
Good little goslings at their play
And well-conducted chicks
Were taught to think poor goosey's flights
Were naughty, ill-bred tricks.
They were content to swim and scratch,
And not at all inclined
For any wild goose chase in search
Of something undefined.
Hard times she had as one may guess,
That young aspiring bird,
Who still from every fall arose
Saddened but undeterred.
She knew she was no nightingale
Yet spite of much abuse,
She longed to help and cheer the world,
Although a plain gray goose
She could not sing, she could not fly,
Nor even walk, with grace,
And all the farmyard had declared
A puddle was her place.
But something stronger than herself
Would cry, "Go on, go on!
Remember, though an humble fowl,
You're cousin to a swan."
So up and down poor goosey went,
A busy, hopeful bird.
Searched many wide unfruitful fields,
And many waters stirred.
At length she came unto a stream
Most fertile of all Niles,
Where tuneful birds might soar and sing
Among the leafy isles.
Here did she build a little nest
Beside the waters still,
Where the parental goose could rest
Unvexed by any bill.
And here she paused to smooth her plumes,
Ruffled by many plagues;
When suddenly arose the cry,
"This goose lays golden eggs."
At once the farmyard was agog;
The ducks began to quack;
Prim Guinea fowls relenting called,
"Come back, come back, come back."
Great chanticleer was pleased to give
A patronizing crow,
And the contemptuous biddies clucked,
"I wish my chicks did so."
The peacocks spread their shining tails,
And cried in accents soft,
"We want to know you, gifted one,
Come up and sit aloft."
Wise owls awoke and gravely said,
With proudly swelling breasts,
"Rare birds have always been evoked
From transcendental nests!"
News-hunting turkeys from afar
Now ran with all thin legs
To gobble facts and fictions of
The goose with golden eggs.
But best of all the little fowls
Still playing on the shore,
Soft downy chicks and goslings gay,
Chirped out, "Dear Goose, lay more."
But goosey all these weary years
Had toiled like any ant,
And wearied out she now replied
"My little dears, I can't.
"When I was starving, half this corn
Had been of vital use,
Now I am surfeited with food
Like any Strasbourg goose."
So to escape too many friends,
Without uncivil strife,
She ran to the Atlantic pond
And paddled for her life.
Soon up among the grand old Alps
She found two blessed things,
The health she had so nearly lost,
And rest for weary limbs.
But still across the briny deep
Couched in most friendly words,
Came prayers for letters, tales, or verse
From literary birds.
Whereat the renovated fowl
With grateful thanks profuse,
Took from her wing a quill and wrote
This lay of a Golden Goose.
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by
Friedrich von Schiller
To the solemn abyss leads the terrible path,
The life and death winding dizzy between;
In thy desolate way, grim with menace and wrath,
To daunt thee the spectres of giants are seen;
That thou wake not the wild one, all silently tread--
Let thy lip breathe no breath in the pathway of dread!
High over the marge of the horrible deep
Hangs and hovers a bridge with its phantom-like span,
Not by man was it built, o'er the vastness to sweep;
Such thought never came to the daring of man!
The stream roars beneath--late and early it raves--
But the bridge, which it threatens, is safe from the waves.
Black-yawning a portal, thy soul to affright,
Like the gate to the kingdom, the fiend for the king--
Yet beyond it there smiles but a land of delight,
Where the autumn in marriage is met with the spring.
From a lot which the care and the trouble assail,
Could I fly to the bliss of that balm-breathing vale!
Through that field, from a fount ever hidden their birth,
Four rivers in tumult rush roaringly forth;
They fly to the fourfold divisions of earth--
The sunrise, the sunset, the south, and the north.
And, true to the mystical mother that bore,
Forth they rush to their goal, and are lost evermore.
High over the races of men in the blue
Of the ether, the mount in twin summits is riven;
There, veiled in the gold-woven webs of the dew,
Moves the dance of the clouds--the pale daughters of heaven!
There, in solitude, circles their mystical maze,
Where no witness can hearken, no earthborn surveys.
August on a throne which no ages can move,
Sits a queen, in her beauty serene and sublime,
The diadem blazing with diamonds above
The glory of brows, never darkened by time,
His arrows of light on that form shoots the sun--
And he gilds them with all, but he warms them with none!
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