The Glugs of Gosh | Page 6

say the elderly folk.
But Sym, he would laugh when he ought
to be sad;
Said his aunt, "Lawk-a-mussy! What's wrong with the lad?
He romps with the puppies, and talks to the ants,
And keeps his loose
change in his second-best pants,
And stumbles all over my

cauliflower plants!"
"There is wisdom in that," laughed the father, Joi.
But the aunt said,
"Toity!" and, "Drat the boy!"
"He shall play," said the father, "some noble part.
Who knows but it
may be in letters or art?
'Tis a dignified business to make folk think."

But the aunt cried, "What! Go messing with ink?
And smear all his
fingers, and take to drink?
Paint hussies and cows, and end in the
clink?"
So the argument ran; but one bright Spring day
Sym settled it all in
his own strange way.
"'Tis a tramp," he announced, "I've decided to be;
And I start next
Monday at twenty to three . . ."
When the aunt recovered she
screamed, "A tramp?
A low-lived, pilfering, idle scamp,
Who steals
people's washing, and sleeps in the damp?"
Sharp to the hour Sym was ready and dressed.
"Young birds," sighed
the father, "must go from the nest.
When the green moss covers those stones you tread,
When the green
grass whispers above my head,
Mark well, wherever your path may
turn,
They have reached the valley of peace who learn
That wise
hearts cherish what fools may spurn."
So Sym went off; and a year ran by,
And the father said, with a
smile-masked sigh,
"It is meet that the young should leave the nest."
Said the aunt, "Don't
spill that soup on your vest!
Nor mention his name! He's our one
disgrace!
And he's probably sneaking around some place
With
fuzzy black whiskers all over his face."
But, under a hedge, by a flowering peach,
A youth with a little blue

wren held speech.
With his back to a tree and his feet in the grass,
He watched the
thistle-down drift and pass,
And the cloud-puffs, borne on a lazy
breeze,
Move by on their errand, above the trees,
Into the vault of
the mysteries.
"Now, teach me, little blue wren," said he.
"'Tis you can unravel this
riddle for me.
I am 'mazed by the gifts of this kindly earth.
Which of them all has
the greatest worth?"
He flirted his tail as he answered then,
He
bobbed and he bowed to his coy little hen:
"Why, sunlight and
worms!" said the little blue wren.
VI. THE END OF JOI
They climbed the trees . . . As was told before,
The Glugs climbed
trees in the days of yore,
When the oldes tree in the land to-day
Was a tender little
seedling--Nay,
This climbing habit was old, so old
That even the
cheeses could not have told
When the past Glug people first began
To give their lives to the
climbing plan.
And the legend ran
That the art was old as the mind of man.
And even the mountains old and hoar,
And the billows that broke on
Gosh's shore
Since the far-off neolithic night,
All knew the Glugs quite well by
sight.
And they tell of a perfectly easy way:
For yesterday's Glug is
the Glug of to-day.

And they climb the trees when the thunder rolls,
To solemnly salve
their shop-worn souls.
For they fear the coals
That threaten to frizzle their shop-worn souls.
They climbed the trees. 'Tis a bootless task
To say so over again, or
ask
The cause of it all, or the reason why
They never felt happier up on
high.
For Joi asked why; and Joi was a fool,
And never a Glug of
the fine old school
With fixed opinions and Sunday clothes,
And the habit of looking
beyond its nose,
And treating foes
With the calm contempt of the One Who Knows.
And every spider who heaves a line
And trusts to his luck when the
day is fine,
Or reckless swings from an awful height,
He knows the Glugs quite
well by sight.
"You can never mistake them," he will say;
"For they
always act in a Gluglike way.
And they climb the trees when the glass points fair,
With
circumspection and proper care,
For they fear to tear
The very expensive clothes they wear."
But Joi was a Glug with a twisted mind
Of the nasty, meditative kind.
He'd meditate on the modes of Gosh,
And dared to muse on the acts
of Splosh;
He dared to speak, and, worse than that,
He spoke out
loud, and he said it flat.
"Why climb?" said he. "When you reach the top
There's nowhere to
go, and you have to stop,

Unless you drop.
And the higher you are the worse you flop."
And every cricket that chirps at eve,
And scoffs at the folly of fools
who grieve,
And the furtive mice who revel at night,
All know the Glugs quite
well by sight.
For, "Why," they say, " in the land of Gosh
There is
no one else who will bow to Splosh.
And they climb the trees when the rain pelts down
And feeds the
gutters that thread the town;
For they fear