ft island looms above the brink,
Then check your hand; you've got the portion due,
So taught my sire, and what he taught is true.
There is a choice in spoons. Though small appear
The nice distinction, yet to me 'tis clear.
The deep-bowled Gallic spoon, contrived to scoop
In ample draughts the thin diluted soup,
Performs not well in those substantial things,
Whose mass adhesive to the metal clings;
Where the strong labial muscles must embrace
The gentle curve, and sweep the hollow space.
With ease to enter and discharge the freight,
A bowl less concave, but still more dilate,
Becomes the pudding best. The shape, the size,
A secret rests, unknown to vulgar eyes.
Experienced feeders can alone impart
A rule so much above the lore of art.
These tuneful lips that thousand spoons have tried,
With just precision could the point decide,
Though not in song--the muse but poorly shines
In cones, and cubes, and geometric lines;
Yet the true form, as near as she can tell,
Is that small section of a goose-egg shell,
Which in two equal portions shall divide
The distance from the centre to the side.
Fear not to slaver; 'tis no deadly sin;--
Like the free Frenchman, from your joyous chin
Suspend the ready napkin; or like me,
Poise with one hand your bowl upon your knee;
Just in the zenith your wise head project,
Your full spoon rising in a line direct,
Bold as a bucket, heed no drops that fall.
The wide-mouthed bowl will surely catch them all!

WILLIAM BARNES

(1800-1886)

Had he chosen to write solely in familiar English, rather than in the
dialect of his native Dorsetshire, every modern anthology would be
graced by the verses of William Barnes, and to multitudes who now know
him not, his name would have become associated with many a country sight
and sound. Other poets have taken homely subjects for their themes,--the
hayfield, the chimney-nook, milking-time, the blossoming of
"high-boughed hedges"; but it is not every one who has sung out of the
fullness of his heart and with a naive delight in that of which he sung:
and so by reason of their faithfulness to every-day life and to nature,
and by their spontaneity and tenderness, his lyrics, fables, and
eclogues appeal to cultivated readers as well as to the rustics whose
quaint speech he made his own.