Classic Poem

Tubby Hook

Mevrouw von Weber was brisk though fat;
She loved her neighbor, she loved her cat,
She loved her husband; but, here's the rub —
Beyond all conscience she loved her tub!
She rubbed and scrubbed with strange delight,
She scrubbed and rubbed from morn till night;
Her earthly hope
Was placed in soap;
Her walls and chimneypiece fairly shone,
Her skirts were starched so they stood alone!

By mop and duster and broom she swore.
She scrubbed the floor
Until she wore
The oak in channels from door to door.
The flood she reveled in never ebbed,
And hill to dale
Retold the tale
That both her hands and her feet were webbed!

Now Hans, her husband, was mild and meek;
He let her scrub through the livelong week;
But when the sud of her washtub churned
On Easter Sunday! — the earthworm turned.
" Nay, vrouw, " quoth he,
" Let labor be!
This day when all of the world's at feast
Thou'lt wash no more — in my house, at least! "
She stopped her toil at her lord's command.
Without a sound
She flaunted round
And took her tub to the river strand,
Where Hans, who followed in dark dismay,
Could hear her vow,
His angry vrouw,
" I'll wash and wash till the Judgment Day! "
Along a river that leaped in flame
The Sailing Witches of Salem came.
(They ride the waters, that evil crew,
Wherever the Duyvil hath work to do.)
And every witch in a washtub sat,
And every witch had a coal-black cat
That steered the course with a supple tail,
A shift for sail,
A shell to bale,
A thread to reef when the wind blew strong,
A broom to whurry the bark along.
They hailed the vrouw on her spit of sand;
She waved them back with a soapy hand.
Cried one whose face was a Chinese mask,
" This dame is sworn to a goodly task!
Come, friends that ride on the crested swell,
We'll charm the spot with a lasting spell
That here she'll stay
And scour away,
And never rest till the Judgment Day! "
With cries to Satan and Beelzebub
They shaped the cape like an upturned tub! —
Beneath its dome and the shifting sands
That busy vrouw at her washtub stands,
While day and night
She bends her might
To scrub the fur of a black cat white!

When down the river the norther scuds
The waves are flecked with the rising suds.
When clouds roll black as a Dutchman's hat
You'll hear the wail of the injured cat!
So heed her fall,
Good housewives all,
And take this truth from a ragged song —
That super-cleanliness may go wrong!English