“Will trousers, such as yours, array
Extremities inferior?
Will chubbiness assert its sway
All over my exterior?
“In this, my unenlightened state,
To work in heavy boots I comes;
Will pumps henceforward decorate
My tiddle toddle tootsicums?
“And shall I get so plump and fresh,
And look no longer seedily?
My skin will henceforth fit my flesh
So tightly and so Tweedie-ly?”
The phantom said, “You’ll have all this,
You’ll know no kind of huffiness,
Your life will be one chubby bliss,
One long unruffled puffiness!”
“Be off!” said irritated Bob.
“Why come you here to bother one?
You pharisaical old snob,
You’re wuss almost than t’other one!
“I takes my pipe—I takes my pot,
And drunk I’m never seen to be:
I’m no teetotaller or sot,
And as I am I mean to be!”
THE STORY OF PRINCE AGIB
Strike the concertina’s melancholy string!
Blow the spirit-stirring harp like anything!
Let the piano’s martial blast
Rouse the Echoes of the Past,
For of Agib, Prince of Tartary, I sing!
Of Agib, who, amid Tartaric scenes,
Wrote a lot of ballet music in his teens:
His gentle spirit rolls
In the melody of souls—
Which is pretty, but I don’t know what it means.
Of Agib, who could readily, at sight,
Strum a march upon the loud Theodolite.
He would diligently play
On the Zoetrope all day,
And blow the gay Pantechnicon all night.