ODE TO A WATER COMPANY.
(By a Poor Sufferer who "Owes it One.")
Oh, Company, scourge, tyrant, tease!
"Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,"
(Like woman,)
And variable—in supply—
As your excuses (all my eye!).
Inhuman,
Brutal, and bumptious (corporate) beast!
Harsh as the wind when in the east!
Were water
"Supplied" to Wealth as 'tis to me,
Short is the shrift that you would see!
Last quarter
You "froze me out," you "cut me off,"
And at my plaintive cries would scoff,
(Confuse you all!)
Claiming for what I did not have,
And treating me like a mere slave,
(As usual.)
And now, in Summer, just to suit
Your interests, you (corporate) brute,
You slacken
My poor, inadequate supply.
Yah! I should like your (corporate) eye
To blacken!
When care and heat bedew my brow,
A ministering demon thou!
My fickle
Supply, upon a day quite torrid,
You slacken to a thread-like, horrid,
Slow trickle.
I cannot wash, I dare not drink,
And fever lurks in pipe and sink.
You, scorning
My needs, my health, may turn the screw,
In mercy, for an hour or two
Each morning,—
Or you may not! Or when my throat is
Heat-parched you come and—without notice—
Dissever
Me from the main for a whole day,
As is your little funny way;
And never
Do I complain, with visage meek,
But you administer more cheek,
You Tartar!
And for redress I've little chance
Unless I've stumped up in advance;
Your "charter"
Always exonerating you,
Whether for "putting on the screw"
Or turning
The service off. Oh, Company!
There are, ah! thousands like poor me,
Who're burning
With indignation at the capers
You play with laundresses, and drapers,
And poor fishmongers.
Beware! The public yet, you bet,
On you that dire revenge will get
For which it hungers!!
AWKWARDLY PUT.
She. "By the way, George, have you got anything on this Evening?"
He. "Nothing whatever."