BORROWING BRAINS.
“Lend me your brains, lend me your brains,”
Screeched a highwayman goblin ’way down in his throat
As deep as he ever could dig up a note.
And his whole gang creaked and hoarsely screaked
Like a hinge that was rusty, and constantly shrieked
“Lend us your brains, lend us your brains,”
As they seized my mare’s head at the bit by the reins
And a long-haired loon with a razory spoon
Clipped open my scalp just over my crown,
And the skull the same place, running crosswise and down;
And they hinged the two pieces with screechy brass bands
Where they singed off my hair by the touch of their hands:
And oh the pains, the pains, the pains,
When they flapped down the cover just back o’ my brains.
My mother came by with a heart-rending cry,
And a wretch popped his eyes from the crown of his hat
As he squealed, “You’ll never again do that!”
And he sharpened his spoon on the sole of his shoon,
Did the long-beard lout by the liquidy moon;
And he severed her brain and her heart in twain
While the rest held me there in my helpless pain.
And the long-beard loons with their long-eared spoons
Stood up on the top of my topless crown
And then leaped to the depths of the hollow turned down.
Oh they teetered and twinged on the part that was hinged,
And they shrieked with delight till the very air cringed
As they sang in their glee how smart they would be
When they got all my brains in their noddles, you see.
And they reached their long spoons, the reechy old loons,
’Way into the cavity made in my head,
And scraped, and scraped till they thought I was dead.
Oh the pains, the pains, the terrible pains
When they spooned from my skull every speck of my brains,
Then with spoons for their pries dragged both of my eyes
Through that hole in my head of such terrible size.
Oh they thought they would be such poets, you see,
And such wonderful, marvelous scholars, you know,
When they planted my brains in their noddles to grow!
But my—oh—oh! what fools they were though!
For poets, you know, are like underdone dough—
And oh—my—oh! what fools they were though
When they planted my brains in their noddles to grow!
But they crammed every grain, their ill-gotten gain,
Clear down in the pokes of their pocket-like ears,
And turned over my eyes to their sages and seers.
But they soon rued they had the brains I had had
For they drove every one of them stark staring mad;
For the goblins, you see, went crazy, like me,
As mad as a March hare ever could be.
To my greatest surprise they brought back my eyes
And put them both back as they always had been.
Since Thought made them crazy, as each one had seen,
They restored me my brains with the greatest of pains,
And handed me back my mare’s bridle-reins;
Then away and up through the atmosphere flew
And left me as sound and as solid as new!
And there was no loon with a goblin spoon,
And there never has been and never will be.
Whether or not this happened to me,
It needn’t at all happen this way to all:
But whatever you do, or whatever befall,
Un-less the gob-lins get your night-mare’s reins,
Don’t ev-er nor ev-er go lend-ing your brains!