He played with care "The Maiden's Prayer;"

He played "God Save the Queen,"

"Die Wacht am Rhein," and "Auld Lang Syne,"

And "Wearing of the Green:"

With futile toots, and brutal toots,

And shrill chromatic scales,

And utterly inutile toots,

And agonizing wails.

The while he played, around him strayed,

And calmly chewed the cud,

Some thirty-nine assorted kine,

All ankle-deep in mud:

They stamped about and tramped about

That mud, till all the troupe

Made noises, as they ramped about,

Like school-boys eating soup.

Till, growing bored, with one accord

They broke the fence forlorn:

The field was doomed. The cows consumed

Two-thirds of all the corn,

And viciously, maliciously,

Went prancing o'er the loam.

That landscape expeditiously

Resembled harvest-home.

"Most idle ass of all your class,"

The farmer said with scorn:

"Just see my son, what you have done!

The cows are in the corn!"

"Oh drat," he said, "the brat!" he said.

The cowherd seemed to rouse.

"My friend, it's worse than that," he said.

"The corn is in the cows."

The moral lies before our eyes.

When tending kine and corn,

Don't spend your noons in tooting tunes

Upon a blatant horn:

Or scaling, and assailing, and

With energy immense,

Your cows will take a railing, and

The farmer take offense.