When the time arrives chip choicest chives,
And administer quietly chili and capsicum ...
(Young girls do not quite know what’s what
Till as a poet into their laps I come).
Then a lobster fresh as fresh can be
(When it screams in the pot I feel a murderer):
After which I fancy we
Shall want a few bottles of Heidseck or Roederer.
The poet of “the redundant hair” then sings his lay in Tennysonian-Arthurian lines, and is ultimately awarded the laureateship of Cloud-Cuckoo-Town.
The verses do not show poor Collins at his best, and are only interesting as relating to the subject of salad. Other songs of his have never been excelled in a certain delicate charm of fancy and quaint turns of versification.