Classic Poem

Little Jack Horner
Sat in a corner
Eating a Christmas pie;
He put in his thumb
And pulled out a plum,
And said: " My Lords — ha! and ah — gentlemen — hum!
The conclusion to which the Committee has come
On the sociological residuum
Of the weak, the unfit, and the blind and the dumb —
The (in short) economic excrescence which some
In less technical terms have described as the Slum
Discovers a Nervous Prostration made numb
By the use of beer, brandy, gin, whisky, and rum,
Affecting the sensitive sensorium
With a blasting effect as of bullets (dum-dum);
And making our workers so gloomy and glum
That they can't take delight in the landscape of Brum,
And will seldom leap up like a chivalrous chum
To make somebody else's big enterprise hum,
And receive in return, by a sound rule of thumb,
The more or less crumby proportion of crumb
Which falls from the table of Baron de Tum
Of Consolidate Glue and Incorporate Gum,
And the British Adventure in Bam-Buzalum.
The table all laden with Clicquot and Mumm
To which they might, too, have aspired, and become
Successful as we are: survived in the scrum
Of the fittest who fight for Honorarium,
And make in Imperio Imperium,
To the manifest gain of Lord Cockalorum;
And at last, to arrive at the Summum Bonum,
The Evolving Eden and Elysium,
The Pattern of Fate with its thread and its thrum,
The End of Existence when — er — that is, um
I appear; and the world has discarded its scrum
Of ignorance, dirt, and of mere tedium.
And the beer and the bloodshed in which it has swum,
And the dissolute cask and the bellicose drum,
And the world that revolves like a mad teetotum
Round Me " — (or, to state his oration in sum)
He said: " What a good boy am I. " !