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erecting an asylum for imbecile children to spend their days;
Then he handed the institution over as free,—
As a free gift and a boon to the people of Dundee.
from
The Royal Review
    August 25, 1881
    All hail to the Empress of India, Great Britain’s Queen—
Long may she live in health, happy and serene—
That came from London, far away,
To review the Scottish Volunteers in grand array:
Most magnificent to be seen,
Near by Salisbury Crags and its pastures green,
Which will long be remembered by our gracious Queen—
    And by the Volunteers, that came from far away,
Because it rain’d most of the day.
And with the rain their clothes were wet all through,
On the 25th day of August, at the Royal Review.
And to the Volunteers it was no lark,
Because they were ankle deep in mud in the Queen’s Park.
    The following poem is, to our knowledge, the only one ever written about Alois Senefelder.
from
The Sprig of Moss
    [B]y taking the impressions of watch-cases he discovered, one day
What is now called the art of Lithography.
So Alois plodded on making known his great discovery,
Until he obtained the notice of the Royal Academy,
Besides, he obtained a gold Medal, and what was more dear to his heart,
He lived to see the wide extension of his art.
    And when life’s prospects may at times appear dreary to ye,
Remember Alois Senefelder, the discoverer of Lithography.
from
The Clepington Catastrophe
    Accidents will happen by land and by sea,
Therefore to save ourselves from accidents, we needn’t try to flee,
For whatsoever God ordained will come to pass
For instance, ye may be killed by a stone or piece of glass.
    The Most Anticlimactic Poem
    I t is no easy task to take a dramatic subject and, through a line of ill-conceived verse, rob it of all drama whatsoever. Yet this is what the very bad poet does. The more advanced very bad poet takes it one step further—writing about a banal subject and descending to the even more banal with a thud.
    from
The Grand Rapids Cricket Club

by
Julia A. Moore
    When Mr. Dennis does well play,
   His courage is full great,
And accidents to him occur,
   But not much though, of late.

JAMES MCINTYRE
(1827-1906)
    A furniture maker by trade, James McIntyre turned his hand to poetry in order to help others appreciate the many wonders of Canada as he viewed them. Key among them: cheese. Few could argue with his rationale; to wit, “it is no insignificant theme.”
    He also found other Canadian topics to write about, ranging from the appointment of a new whip in the Ontario legislature to bear hunting to an eighteen-foot ox exhibited at a fair. He even plugged his own furniture business in his inimitable style (“McIntyre has a few rows / Of the latest styles of Bureaus”). McIntyre turned out two books of poetry,
Musings on the Banks of Canadian Thames
and
Poems of James McIntyre
—both proof that he was a Canadian original, the North American equivalent of Scottish poet William McGonagall.
    As one of his fans wrote, in a letter excerpted in McIntyre’s second collection of poems:
    In writing you do not pretend
With Tennysonian themes to blend,
It is an independent style
Begotten on Canadian soil.
    The following poem—one of McIntyre’s much vaunted “cheese odes”—is about an actual cheese. The particular cheese that merited such waxing weighed four tons and was displayed at a Toronto exposition circa 1855.
Ode on the Mammoth Cheese
    Weighing over
7,000
pounds
    We have seen thee, queen of cheese,
Lying quietly at your ease,
Gently fanned by evening breeze,
Thy fair form no flies dare seize.
    All gaily dressed soon you’ll go
To the great Provincial show,
To be admired by many a beau
In the city of Toronto.
    Cows numerous as a swarm of bees,
Or as the leaves upon the trees,
It did require to make thee please,
And stand unrivalled, queen of cheese.
    May you not receive a scar as
We have heard that Mr. Harris
Intends to send you off as far as
The great world’s show at Paris.
    Of the