Classic Poem

I told him I wouldn't—by George, and I meant it
It's six o'clock now and too late to repent it,—
Why need he come trying to wheedle and flatter me?
Confound that Professor of morbid Anatomy!

I swore that I would n't—I cant commit perjury—
—There's a rap at my door—the Professor of Surgery—
He'd like to know whether I shall not read something—
Why, haven't I sworn that I will be a dumb thing?

“I am told,” he replies, “there are strong expectations
Of one of your rhyming tintinnabulations,—”
I don't care, says I, what they told you about it—
I myself—on the highest authority,—doubt it,
It's a quarter past six, and its out of the question—
It will just interrupt duodenal digestion—
For writing carotids and vertebrals taxes
I want all my blood for my caliac axis.

This stoning of frogs to the boy pretty sport is
As the hill paddy said in articulo mortis,
And its pleasant no doubt while one's filling his pharynx
To call for a tune from another man's larynx.

I told him I wouldn't—I mean to stick to it.
In spite of J. B. S. J.—he can't make me do it—
Go—bid your old skeletons open their throttles,
Or stir up the babes in your alcohol bottles!

No, no! you can't do it! don't think I'm half-witted
Like alcohol babies whose brains were omitted!
You don't suppose mine are beginning to soften?
They would if I did as you'd have me so often.

—“So often! How often? No need we should tell you,—
It is not the lips of the living compel you—”
Ah no! from the shadows that hover around us
I hear in the accents of friendship that bound us,—

“Come now for the voice to which fondly we listened
Some years before half these young fellows were christened
It will cost you an hour, it will soothe us a minute
Though nothing but love and good nature are in it.”

Have I broken my oath like a traitor false-hearted?
It was made to the living and the departed;
I turn to the past from the bloom of the present
That charming old lady is always so pleasant!

But this is no place for the sage that remembers,—
We want the bright flame, not the ashes and embers,—
We ask but for smiles, not for tear drops to tickle,—
Come, J. B. S. J. show a baby in pickle!