Harry Graham - Verse and Worse

If you should care to patronise
A bull-fight, as you will no doubt,
You'll see a horse with blinded eyes
Be very badly mauled about;
By such a scene a weak inside
Is sometimes rather sorely tried.

And, if the bull is full of fun,
The horse is generally gored,
So then they fetch another one,
Or else the first one is encored;
The humour of the sport, of course,
Is not so patent to the horse.

Be kind to ev'ry bull you meet,
Remember how the creature feels;
Don't wink at ladies in the street;
And don't make speeches after meals;
And lastly, I need not explain,
If you're a horse, don't go to Spain.

This atmosphere is pure ozone!
To climb the hills you promptly start;
Unless you happen to be prone
To palpitations of the heart;
In which case swarming up the Alps
Brings on a bad attack of palps.

The nicest method is to stay
Quite comfortably down below,
And, from the steps of your chalet,
Watch other people upwards go.
Then you can buy an alpenstock,
And scratch your name upon a rock.

Don't do fatiguing things which you
Can pay another man to do.
Let friends assume (they may be wrong),
That you each year ascend Mong Blong.
Some things you can pretend you've done,
And climbing up the Alps is one.

The Sultan of the Purple East
Is quite a cynic, in his way,
And really doesn't mind the least
His nickname of 'Abdul the – ' (Nay!
I might perhaps come in for blame
If I divulged this monarch's name.)

The Turk is such a kindly man,
But his ideas of sport are crude;
He to the poor Armenian
Is not intentionally rude,
But still it is his heartless habit

To treat him as we treat the rabbit.
If he wants bracing up a bit,
His pleasing little custom is
To take a hatchet and commit
A series of atrocities.
I should not fancy, after dark,
To meet him, say, in Regent's Park.

A deeply married man is he,
'Early and often' is his rule;
He practises polygamy
Directly after leaving school,
And so arranges that his wives
Live happy but secluded lives.

If they attend a public place,
They have to do so in disguise,
And so conceal one-half their face
That nothing but a pair of eyes
Suggests the hidden charm that lurks
Beneath the veils of lady Turks.

Then too in Turkey all the men
Smoke water-pipes and cross their legs;
They watch their harem as a hen
That guards her first attempt at eggs.
(If you don't know what harems are,
Just run and ask your dear papa.)

Wives of great men oft remind us
We should make our wives sublime,
But the years advancing find us
Vainly working over-time.
We could minimise our work
By the methods of the Turk.

Here you will see strange happenings
With absolutely placid eyes;
If all your uncles sprouted wings
You would not feel the least surprise;
The oddest things that you can do
Don't seem a bit absurd to you.

You go (in Dreamland) to a ball,
And suddenly are shocked to find
That you have nothing on at all, —
But somehow no one seems to mind;
And, naturally, you don't care,
If they can bear what you can bare!

Then, in a moment, you're pursued
By engines on a railway track!
Your legs are tied, your feet are glued,
The train comes snorting down your back!
One last attempt at flight you make
And so (in bed) perspiring wake.

You feel so free from weight of cares
That, if the staircase you should climb,
You gaily mount, not single stairs,
But whole battalions at a time;
(My metaphor is mixed, may be,
I quote from Shakespeare, as you see).

If you should eat too much, you pay
(In dreams) the penalty for this;
A nightmare carries you away
And drops you down a precipice!
Down! down! until, with sudden smack,
You strike the mattress with your back.

At meals decline to be a beast;
'Too much is better than a feast.'

The customs of this land have all
Been published in a bulky tome.
The author is a man they call
Jer ome K. J er ome K . Jer ome .
So, lest on his preserves I poach,
This subject I refuse to broach.

The moral here is plain to see.
If true the hackneyed witticism
Which stamps Originality
As 'undetected plagiarism,'
What a vocation I have miss'd
As undetected plagiarist!

This is the land where minor bards
And other lunatics repair,
To live in houses made of cards,
Or build their castles in the air;
To feed on hope, and idly dream
That things are really what they seem.

The natives are a motley lot,
Of ev'ry age and creed and race,
But each inhabitant has got
The same expression on his face;
They look, when this their features fills,
Like angels with internal chills.

The lover sits, the livelong day,
Quite inarticulate of speech;
He simply brims with things to say;
Alas! the words he cannot reach,
And, silent, lets occasion pass,
Feeling a fulminating ass.

It is the lady lover's wont
To blush, and look demure or coy,