TO JAMES (MULE) WHO HAS PLAYED ME FALSE.
[Many mules are appearing upon the streets of London and are showing an extraordinary and unexpected docility amidst the traffic.]
James, when I note your air supremely docile,
Your well-fed look of undisturbed content
(Doubtless you find this land an adipose isle
After lean times on active service spent),
I do not join with those who hymn your praises
For calmness mid the turmoil of the town;
I find myself consigning you to blazes—
James, you have let me down.
For I am one who, after having striven,
A hero (vide Press) though far from bold,
Has come back home and, naturally, given
Artistic touches to the tales he's told;
The Transport was my scene of martial labours;
That was the section where I saw it through;
And I have told astonished friends and neighbours
Some lurid yarns of you.
You are the theme I have been wont to brag on;
I've told how you, my now innocuous moke,
Would chew the tail-board off a G.S. wagon
By way of mere plaisanterie (or joke);
Dubbed you most diabolical of ragers,
A rampant hooligan, a fetid tough,
A thing without respect for sergeant-majors—
That is to say, hot stuff.
Full many a fair young thing I've seen displaying
A sympathetic pallor on her cheek
And wonder in her eye, when I've been saying
How almost every day in Salonique
You jazzed with me on brinks of precipices;
But when I talk to-day they cannot fail
To think of you in town and murmur, "This is
A likely sort of tale."
To take, without one thought of evil plotting,
Even without one last protesting kick,
Thus kindly to somnambulistic trotting—
Oh, James, old pal, it was a dirty trick;
To show the yarns I'd told of you and written
(In letters home) were not entirely swank
At very least, I think, you might have bitten
The policeman at the Bank.