Love unrequited, robs me of me rest,
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Love, hopeless love, my ardent soul encumbers,
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Love, nightmare like, lies heavy of me chest,
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And weaves itself into my midnight slumbers.
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When you're lying awake with a dismal headache and
Repose is taboo'd by anxiety,
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I conceive you may use any language you choose to
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Indulge in, without impropriety;
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For your brain is on fire, the bed-clothes conspire of
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Usual slumber to plunder you:
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First your counter-pane goes, and uncovers your toes,
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And your sheet slips demurely from under you;
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Then the blanketing tickles, you feel like mixed
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Pickles, so terribly sharp is the pricking,
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And you're hot and you're cross, and you tumble and
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Toss 'til there's nothing 'twixt you and the
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Ticking.
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Then the bed-clothes all creep to the ground in a heap
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And you pick 'em all up in a tangle;
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Next your pillow resigns and politely declines to
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Remain at it's usual angle!
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Well, you get some repose in the form of a dose, with
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Hot eye-balls and head ever aching,
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But your slumbering teems with such horrible dreams
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That you'd very much better be waking;
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For you dream you are crossing the channel, and
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Tossing about in a steamer from harwich,
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Which is something between a large bathing machine and
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A very small second class carriage,
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And you're giving a treat (penny ice and cold meat) to
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A party of friends and relations,
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They're a ravenous horde, and they all come on board
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At sloane square and south kensington stations.
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And bound on that journey you find your attorney
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(who started this morning from devon);
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He's a bit undersiz'd and you don't feel surpris'd
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When he tells you he's only eleven.
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Well you're driving like mad with this singular lad
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(by the bye the ship's now a four wheeler),
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And you're playing round games, and he calls you bad
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Names when you tell him that "ties pay the dealer";
But this you can't stand so you throw up your hand,
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And you find you're as cold as an icicle;
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In your shirt and your socks (the black silk with gold
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Clocks) crossing sal'sbury plain on a bicycle:
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And he and the crew are on bicycles too, which they've
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Somehow or other invested in,
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And he's telling the tars all the particulars of a
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Company he's interested in;
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It's a scheme of devices, to get at low prices, all
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Good from cough mixtures to cables
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(which tickled the sailors), by treating retailers as
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Though they were all vegetables;
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You get a good spadesman to plant a small tradesman
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(first take off his boots with a boot tree),
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And his legs will take root, and his fingers will
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Shoot, and they'll blossom and bud like a fruit
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Tree;
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From the green grocer tree you get grapes and green
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Pea, cauliflower, pine apple and cranberries,
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While the pastry cook plant cherry brandy will grant,
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Apple puffs, and three corners, and banburys;
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The shares are a penny and ever so many are taken by
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Rothschild and baring,
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And just as a few are allotted to you, you awake
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And with a shudder despairing
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You're a regular wreck, with a crick in your neck, and
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No wonder you snore, for your head's on the floor
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And you've needles and pins from your soles to your
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Shins, and your flesh is acreep, for your left leg's
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Asleep,
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And you've cramp in your toes, and a fly on your nose,
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And some fluff in your lung, and a feverish tongue,
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And a thirst that's intense,
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And a general sense that you haven't been sleeping in
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Clover;
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But the darkness has pass'd, and it's daylight at
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Last, and the night has been long, ditto, ditto my
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Song,
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And thank goodness they're both of them over!
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