Welcome to PhiloLogic |
home | the ARTFL project | download | documentation | sample databases | |
Shillaber, B. P. (Benjamin Penhallow), 1814-1890 [1859], Knitting-work: a web of many textures. (Brown, Taggard & Chase, Boston) [word count] [eaf676T]. To look up a word in a dictionary, select the word with your mouse and press 'd' on your keyboard.
Regarding oysters, these delightful esculents enter so
Thy history, my oyster, who may tell — Thy antecedents, and thy hopes and loves? In oozy mud thou mak'st thy humble bed, Subject to rakes that dare its fold invade, To drag thee from thy home, a sacrifice Unto the predatory maw of man, Long thirsting for the blood of all thy kind. Delicious bivalve! how my heart expands As I thy many beauties contemplate! The cruel knife has rent thee from thy shell — Ah! what shall pay such most inhuman rent? — Not unresisting, and, as on the plate
Thou liest, quivering, drowned in saline tears, Thou seem'st a fitting subject for the muse. The throb of pity tuggeth at my heart, As thus I view thee hapless, hopeless, lie A love beyond all words absorbs my soul. Yes, thou art lovely, and for thee e'en now May some lone oyster pine in lands afar, Where Old Virginia hides its teeming beds Beneath the Chesapeake's translucent tides! 'Tis thus I 'll hide thee, O my tender one, And, plunging thee beneath this acid wave, With pepper intermixed, and salt preädded, I poise thee gently on my waiting fork, Gaze for an instant on thy pleasing shape, Then ope my mouth awaiting for the prize — And then a gulp — a sigh — and all is done.
Shillaber, B. P. (Benjamin Penhallow), 1814-1890 [1859], Knitting-work: a web of many textures. (Brown, Taggard & Chase, Boston) [word count] [eaf676T]. |