Mother Goose Sonnets - Morgridge

Jack and JILL AH, Jack it was, and with him little Jill, Of the same age and size, a neighbor’s daughter, Who on a breezy morning climbed the hill To fetch down to the house a pail of water. Jack put his best foot foremost on that day,— Vaulting ambition we have seen before,— He stepped too far, of course, and soon he lay In the vile path, his little crown so sore! The next act in the tragedy was played By Jill, whose eager foothold, too, was brief. Epitome of life, that boy and maid Together hoped, together came to grief. And in their simple story lies concealed The germ of half that ’s plucked in fiction’s field. SIMPLE SIMON A BOY named Simon sojourned in a dale; Some said that he was simple, but I ’m sure That he was nothing less than simon pure; They thought him so because, forsooth, a whale He tried to catch in Mother’s water-pail. Ah! little boy, timid, composed, demure,— He had imagination. Yet endure Defeat he could, for he of course did fail. But there are Simons of a larger growth, Who, too, in shallow waters fish for whales, And when they fail they are “unfortunate.” If the small boy is simple, then are both, And the big Simon more, who often rails At what he calls ill luck or unkind fate.