The Harpy

They certainly contrived to raise
Queer ladies in the olden days.
Either the type had not been fixed,
Or else Zoology got mixed.
I envy not primeval man
This female on the feathered plan.
We only have, I'm glad to say,
Two kinds of human bird to-day--
Women and warriors, who still
Wear feathers when dressed up to kill.

Oliver Herford

Oliver Herford was born in England on December 2, 1860. He was a British-born American writer, artist, and illustrator, often referred to as 'The American Oscar Wilde' for his sharp wit and humorous works. Herford authored and illustrated many books for children and adults, contributing to magazines such as "The Criterion", "Life", and "Punch". He died on July 5, 1935, in France.

Oliver Herford

The Sloth.

Oliver Herford, Simple Poetry

Guglielmo Marconi

Oliver Herford, Simple Poetry

Stairs - A Toast

Oliver Herford, Simple Poetry

G. K. Chesterton

Oliver Herford, Simple Poetry

English

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The Convention

From the Queen Bee mother, the mother Beast, and the mother Fowl in the fen,
A call went up to the human world, to Woman, the mother of men.
The call said, 'Come:    for we, the dumb, are given speech for a day,
And the things we have thought for a thousand years we are going at last to say.'

Much they marvelled, these women of earth, at the strange and curious call,
And some of them laughed, and some of them sneered, but they answered it one and all,
For they wanted to hear what never before was heard since the world began -
The spoken word of Beast and Bird, and the message it held for Man.

'A plea for shelter,' the woman said, 'or food in the wintry weathers,
Or a foolish request that we be dressed without their furs or feathers.
We will do what we can for the poor dumb thin...

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The Gryphon

It chanced that Allah, looking round,
When he had made his creatures, found
Half of an Eagle and a pair
Of extra Lion legs to spare.
So, hating waste, he took some glue
And made a Gryphon of the two.
But when his handiwork he eyed,
He frowned--and it was petrified,
Doomed for all time to represent
Impatience on a monument.
Sometimes upon our path to-day
Its living counterpart will stray--
Columbia's Eagle strutting in
An awf'ly English Lion's skin,
With glass in eye and swagg'ring gait:
Behold the Gryphon up to date.

Oliver Herford

The Chimera

You'd think a lion or a snake
Were quite enough one's nerves to shake;
But in this classic beast we find
A lion and a snake combined,
And, just as if that weren't enough,
A goat thrown in to make it tough.
Let scientists the breed pooh! pooh!
Come with me to some Social Zoo
And hear the bearded Lion bleat
Goat-like on patent-kidded feet,
Whose "Civil leer and damning praise"
The serpent's cloven tongue betrays.
Lo! lion, goat, and snake combined!
Thus Nature doth repeat her kind.

Oliver Herford

A Fable.

        Some cawing Crows, a hooting Owl,
        A Hawk, a Canary, an old Marsh-Fowl,
    One day all meet together
        To hold a caucus and settle the fate
        Of a certain bird (without a mate),
    A bird of another feather.

        "My friends," said the Owl, with a look most wise,
        "The Eagle is soaring too near the skies,
    In a way that is quite improper;
        Yet the world is praising her, so I'm told,
        And I think her actions have grown so bold
    That some of us ought to stop her."

        "I have heard it said," quoth Hawk, with a sigh,
        "That young lambs died at the glance of her eye,
    And I wholly scorn and despise her.
        This, and more, I am told they say,
        And I think that the only ...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Grand Chorus of Birds from Aristophanes

Attempted in English verse after the original metre.

I was allured into the audacity of this experiment by consideration of a fact which hitherto does not seem to have been taken into consideration by any translator of the half divine humourist in whose incomparable genius the highest qualities of Rabelais were fused and harmonized with the supremest gifts of Shelley: namely, that his marvellous metrical invention of the anapæstic heptameter was almost exactly reproducible in a language to which all variations and combinations of anapæstic, iambic, or trochaic metre are as natural and pliable as all dactylic and spondaic forms of verse are unnatural and abhorrent. As it happens, this highest central interlude of a most adorable masterpiece is as easy to detach from its dramatic setting, and even from its lyrical context, as ...

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Philosopher And Pheasant.
A sage awakened by the dawn,
By music of the groves was drawn
From tree to tree: responsive notes
Arose from many warbling throats.
As he advanced, the warblers ceased;
Silent the bird and scared the beast -
The nightingale then ceased her lay,
And the scared leveret ran away.
The sage then pondered, and his eye
Roamed round to learn the reason why.

He marked a pheasant, as she stood
Upon a bank, above her brood;
With pride maternal beat her breast
As she harangued and led from nest:

"Play on, my infant brood - this glen
Is free from bad marauding men.
O trust the hawk, and trust the kite,
Sooner than ...
John Gay