With a red-roofed fishing village above,
Of irregular cottages, perched up high
Amid pale yellow poppies next to the sky. 
Shells and pebbles, and wrack below,
And shrimpers shrimping all in a row;
Tawny sails and tarry boats,
Dark brown nets and old cork floats;
Nasty smells at the nicest spots,
And blue-jerseyed sailors and—­lobster-pots.

              “It is sweet to be
    At home in the deep, deep sea. 
    It is very pleasant to have the power
    To take the air on dry land for an hour;
    And when the mid-day midsummer sun
    Is toasting the fields as brown as a bun,
    And the sands are baking, it’s very nice
    To feel as cool as a strawberry ice
    In one’s own particular damp sea-cave,
    Dipping one’s feelers in each green wave. 
    It is good, for a very rapacious maw,
    When storm-tossed morsels come to the claw;
    And ‘the better to see with’ down below,
    To wash one’s eyes in the ebb and flow
    Of the tides that come and the tides that go.” 
    So sang the Lobsters, thankful for their mercies,
    All but the hero of these simple verses. 
              Now a hero—­
      If he’s worth the grand old name—­
    Though temperature may change from boiling-point to zero
      Should keep his temper all the same: 
    Courageous and content in his estate,
    And proof against the spiteful blows of Fate. 
    It, therefore, troubles me to have to say,
      That with this Lobster it was never so;
    Whate’er the weather or the sort of day,
      No matter if the tide were high or low,
    Whatever happened he was never pleased,
    And not himself alone, but all his kindred teased.

“Oh! oh! 
What a world of woe
We flounder about in, here below! 
Oh dear! oh dear! 
It is too, too dull, down here! 
I haven’t the slightest patience
With any of my relations;
I take no interest whatever
In things they call curious and clever. 
And, for love of dear truth I state it,
As for my Home—­I hate it! 
I’m convinced I was formed for a larger sphere,
And am utterly out of my element here.” 
Then his brothers and sisters said,
Each solemnly shaking his and her head,
“You put your complaints in most beautiful verse,
And yet we are sure,
That, in spite of all you have to endure,
You might go much farther and fare much worse. 
We wish you could live in a higher sphere,
But we think you might live happily here.” 
“I don’t live, I only exist,” he said,
“Be pleased to look upon me as dead.” 
And he swam to his cave, and took to his bed. 
He sulked so long that the sisters cried,
“Perhaps he has really and truly died.” 
But the brothers went to the cave to peep,
For they said, “Perhaps he is only asleep.” 
They found him, far too busy to talk,
With a very large piece of bad salt pork. 
“Dear Brother, what luck you have had to-day! 
Can you tell us, pray,
Is there any more pork afloat in the bay?”
But not a word would my hero say,
Except to repeat, with sad persistence,
“This is not life, it’s only existence.”