The Ride-by-Nights

Up on their brooms the Witches stream,
Crooked and black in the cresent's gleam;
One foot high, and one foot low,
Bearded, cloaked, and cowled, they go.
'Neath Charlie's Wain they twitter and tweet,
And away they swam 'neath the Dragon's feet.
With a whoop and a flutter they swing and sway,
And surge pell-mell down the Milky Way.
Betwixt the legs of the glittering Chair
The hover and squeak in the empty air.
Then round they swoop past the glimmering Lion
To where Sirius barks behind huge Orion;
Up, then, and over to wheel amain,
Under the silver, and home again.

--Walter de la Mare

Road Up

What's wrong with the road?
Why all this hush?-
They've given an anaesthetic
In the lunch-hour rush.

They've shave off the tarmac
With a pneumatic drill,
And bandaged the traffic
To a dead standstill.

Surgeons in shirt-sleeves
Bend over the patient,
Intent on a major
Operation.

Don't dare sneeze!
Don't dare shout!
The road is having
Its appendix out.

--Norman Nicholson

Roger the Dog

Asleep he wheezes at his ease.
he only wakes to scratch his fleas.

He hogs the fire, he bakes his head
As if it were a load of bread.

He's just a sack or snoring dog.
You can lug him like a log.

You can rool him with your foot,
He'll stay snoring where he's put.

I take him out for exercise,
He rolls in cowclap up to his eyes.

He will not race, he will not romp,
he saves his strength for gobble and chomp.

He'll work as hard as you could wish
Emptying his dinner dish,

Then flops flat, and digs down deep,
Like a miner, into sleep.

--Ted Hughes