To check the slackness growing rife and rifer;
And it would fall far lower still
(Being, indeed, reduced to nil)
If they should go and knife her.
Yet there are men who press the slaughterers' claim
In sympathetic language, talking loosely;
Among them Mr. Gosling—shame
That anyone with such a name
Should cackle so ungoosely!
Not in your honour would that bird be slain