“How strange!” I said to one I saw;
“You quite upset our every law.
However can you get along
So systematically wrong?”
“Dear me!” my mad informant said,
“Have you no eyes within your head?
You sneer when you your hat should doff:
Why, we begin where you leave off!
“Your wisest men are very far
Less learned than our babies are!”
I mused awhile—and then, oh me!
I framed this brilliant repartee:
“Although your babes are wiser far
Than our most valued sages are,
Your sages, with their toys and cots,
Are duller than our idiots!”
But this remark, I grieve to state,
Came just a little bit too late
For as I framed it in my head,
I woke and found myself in bed.
Still I could wish that, ’stead of here,
My lot were in that favoured sphere!—
Where greatest fools bear off the bell
I ought to do extremely well.
THE BISHOP OF RUM-TI-FOO AGAIN.
I often wonder whether you
Think sometimes of that Bishop, who
From black but balmy Rum-ti-Foo
Last summer twelvemonth came.
Unto your mind I p’r’aps may bring
Remembrance of the man I sing
To-day, by simply mentioning
That Peter was his name.
Remember how that holy man
Came with the great Colonial clan
To Synod, called Pan-Anglican;
And kindly recollect
How, having crossed the ocean wide,
To please his flock all means he tried
Consistent with a proper pride
And manly self-respect.
He only, of the reverend pack
Who minister to Christians black,
Brought any useful knowledge back
To his Colonial fold.
In consequence a place I claim
For “Peter” on the scroll of Fame
(For Peter was that Bishop’s name,
As I’ve already told).