Verse and Worse. Graham Harry

      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

      Jerome K. Jerome K. Jerome.

      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,