W. S. Gilbert

“ You’re a regular wreck, with a crick in your neck, and no wonder you snore, for your head’s on the floor, and you’ve needles and pins from your soles to your shins, and your flesh is a-creep, for your left leg’s asleep, and you’ve cramp in your toes, and a fly on your nose, and some fluff in your lung, and a feverish tongue, and a thirst that’s intense, and a general sense that you haven’t been sleeping in clover;
But the darkness has passed, and it’s daylight at last, and the night has been long—ditto, ditto my song—and thank goodness they’re both of them over! ”

“ He sobbed and he sighed, and a gurgle he gave,
Then he threw himself into the billowy wave,
And an echo arose from the suicide's grave—
"Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillow!"
Now I feel just as sure as I'm sure that my name
Isn't Willow, titwillow, titwillow,
That 'twas blighted affection that made him exclaim,
"Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillow!"
And if you remain callous and obdurate, I
Shall perish as he did, and you will know why,
Though I probably shall not exclaim as I die,
"Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillow!" ”

“ Number seventy, Simmery Axe.
We’ve a first-class assortment of magic;
And for raising a posthumous shade
With effects that are comic or tragic,
There’s no cheaper house in the trade.
Love-philtre—we’ve quantities of it;
And for knowledge if any one burns,
We keep an extremely small prophet, a prophet
Who brings us unbounded returns:
For he can prophesy
With a wink of his eye,
Peep with security
Into futurity,
Sum up your history,
Clear up a mystery,
Humour proclivity
For a nativity. ”

“ And had a son—a guileless youth—
In probable succession;
To teach him patience, teach him tact,
How promptly in a fix to act,
He should adopt, in point of fact,
A manager’s profession.
To that condition he should stoop
(Despite a too fond mother) ,
With eight or ten “stars” in his troupe,
All jealous of each other!
Oh, the man who can rule a theatrical crew,
Each member a genius (and some of them two) ,
And manage to humour them, little and great,
Can govern a tuppenny-ha’penny State! ”

“ A highly susceptible Chancellor!
p. 198WHEN A MERRY MAIDEN MARRIES When a merry maiden marries,
Sorrow goes and pleasure tarries;
Every sound becomes a song,
All is right and nothing’s wrong!
From to-day and ever after
Let your tears be tears of laughter—
Every sigh that finds a vent
Be a sigh of sweet content!
When you marry merry maiden,
Then the air with love is laden;
Every flower is a rose,
Every goose becomes a swan,
Every kind of trouble goes
Where the last year’s snows have gone;
Sunlight takes the place of shade
When you marry merry maid! ”

“ The end is easily foretold,
When every blessed thing you hold
Is made of silver, or of gold,
You long for simple pewter.
When you have nothing else to wear
But cloth of gold and satins rare,
For cloth of gold you cease to care—
Up goes the price of shoddy.
In short, whoever you may be,
To this conclusion you'll agree,
When everyone is somebodee,
Then no one's anybody! ”

“ Why, what a very cultivated kind of youth this kind of youth must be!”
Then a sentimental passion of a vegetable fashion must excite your languid spleen,
An attachment à la Plato for a bashful young potato, or a not-too-French French bean.
Though the Philistines may jostle, you will rank as an apostle in the high æsthetic band,
If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in your mediæval hand. ”

“ THE air is charged with amatory numbers—
⁠Soft madrigals, and dreamy lovers' lays.
Peace, peace, old heart! Why waken from its slumbers
The aching memory of the old, old days?
Time was when Love and I were well acquainted.
Time was when we walked ever hand in hand;
A saintly youth, with worldly thought untainted,
None better-loved than I in all the land!
Time was, when maidens of the noblest station,
Forsaking even military men,
Would gaze upon me, rapt in adoration—
Ah me, I was a fair young curate then! ”

“ WHENE'ER I poke
⁠Sarcastic joke
⁠Replete with malice spiteful,
⁠The people vile
⁠Politely smile
⁠And vote me quite delightful!
⁠Now, when a wight
⁠Sits up all night
⁠Ill-natured jokes devising,
⁠And all his wiles
⁠Are met with smiles.
⁠It's hard, there's no disguising!
Oh, don't the days seem lank and long
When all goes right and nothing goes wrong,
And isn't your life extremely flat
With nothing whatever to grumble at! ”

“ When the footpads quail at the night-bird's wail, and black dogs bay the moon,
Then is the spectre's holiday—then is the ghosts' high noon!
As the sob of the breeze sweeps over the trees, and the mists lie low on the fen,
From grey tomb-stones are gathered the bones that once were women and men,
And away they go, with a mop and a mow, to the revel that ends too soon,
For cockcrow limits our holiday—the dead of the night's high noon! ”

“ I'd a swallow-tail coat of a beautiful blue—
A brief which I bought of a booby—
A couple of shirts and a collar or two.
And a ring that looked like a ruby!
In Westminster Hall I danced a dance,
Like a semi-despondent fury;
For I thought I should never hit on a chance
Of addressing a British Jury—
But I soon got tired of third class journeys,
And dinners of bread and water;
So I fell in love with a rich attorney's
Elderly, ugly daughter. ”

“ I'm a genuine philanthropist—all other kinds are sham.
Each little fault of temper and each social defect
In my erring fellow creatures, I endeavour to correct.
To all their little weaknesses I open people's eyes
And little plans to snub the self sufficient I devise;
I love my fellow creatures—I do all the good I can—
Yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man! ”

“ That all family fools,
Of whatever degree,
Must observe if they love their profession.
If you wish to succeed as a jester, you’ll need
To consider each person’s auricular:
What is all right for B would quite scandalise C
(For C is so very particular) ;
And D may be dull, and E’s very thick skull
Is as empty of brains as a ladle;
While F is F sharp, and will cry with a carp,
That he’s known your best joke from his cradle!
When your humour they flout,
You can’t let yourself go;
And it does put you out
When a person says, “Oh!
I have known that old joke from my cradle!” ”

“ What deep delight from sources trite inventive humour coaxes,
That pain and trouble brew
For every one but you!
Gunpowder placed inside its waist improves a mild Havanah,
Its unexpected flash
Burns eyebrows and moustache;
When people dine no kind of wine beats ipecacuanha,
But common sense suggests
You keep it for your guests—
Then naught annoys the organ boys like throwing red-hot coppers,
And much amusement bides
In common butter-slides.
And stringy snares across the stairs cause unexpected croppers.
Coal scuttles, recollect,
Produce the same effect. ”

“ When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern gunnery,
When I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery,
In short, when I’ve a smattering of elementary strategy,
You’ll say a better Major-General has never sat a gee—
For my military knowledge, though I’m plucky and adventury,
Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century.
But still in learning vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-Gineral! ”

“ There’s the pestilential nuisances who write for autographs—
All people who have flabby hands and irritating laughs—
All children who are up in dates, and floor you with ’em flat—
All persons who in shaking hands, shake hands with you like that—
And all third persons who on spoiling tête-à-têtes insist—
They’d none of ’em be missed—they’d none of ’em be missed!
There’s the nigger serenader, and the others of his race,
And the piano organist—I’ve got him on the list!
And the people who eat peppermint and puff it in your face,
They never would be missed—they never would be missed! ”

“ For the pretty little flower and the great oak tree!
⁠Said she, "He loved me never,
⁠Did that great oak tree,
⁠But I'm neither rich nor clever.
⁠And so why should he?
⁠But though fate our fortunes sever,
⁠To be constant I'll endeavour,
⁠Ay, for ever and for ever,
⁠To my great oak tree!"
⁠Sing hey,
⁠Lackaday!
⁠Let the tears fall free
For the pretty little flower and the great oak tree! ”

“ We retire to our attic
With the gratifying feeling that our duty has been done.
Oh, philosophers may sing
Of the troubles of a King,
But of pleasures there are many and of troubles there are none ”

“ Offering love for all their lives;
But for iron the magnet felt no whim,
Though he charmed iron, it charmed not him,
From needles and nails and knives he'd turn,
For he'd set his love on a Silver Churn! ”

“ Yet life and death
May hang upon a maid's "heigho!"
When maiden loves, she mopes apart,
As owl mopes on a tree;
Although she keenly feels the smart,
She cannot tell what ails her heart,
With its sad "Ah me!" ”

“ Happy be thy life, O maid!
p. 335A NIGHTMARE When you’re lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is taboo’d by anxiety,
I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in without impropriety;
For your brain is on fire—the bedclothes conspire of usual slumber to plunder you:
First your counterpane goes and uncovers your toes, and your sheet slips demurely from under you;
Then the blanketing tickles—you feel like mixed pickles, so terribly sharp is the pricking,
And you’re hot, and you’re cross, and you tumble and toss till there’s nothing ’twixt you and the ticking. ”

“ Who love with a love life-long, O!
It's the song of a merrymaid, peerly proud,
Who loved a lord, and who laughed aloud
At the moan of the merryman, moping mum,
Whose soul was sore, whose glance was glum,
Who sipped no sup, and who craved no crumb,
As he sighed for the love of a ladye!
Heighdy! heighdy! ”

“ TRY we life-long, we can never
⁠Straighten out life's tangled skein,
Why should we, in vain endeavour,
Guess and guess and guess again?
Life's a pudding full of plums;
Care's a canker that benumbs. ”

“ Would be one heart with thine,
⁠And in that shrine
⁠Our happiness would dwell—
⁠Were I thy bride!
⁠And all day long
Our lives should be a song:
⁠No grief, no wrong
⁠Should make my heart rebel—
⁠Were I thy bride! ”

“ HE LOVES!
HE loves! If the bygone years
⁠Thine eyes have ever shed
Tears—bitter, unavailing tears,
For one untimely dead—
If in the eventide of life
Sad thoughts of her arise,
Then let the memory of thy wife
Plead for my boy—he dies!
He dies! ”

“ Yet, the breeze is but a rover.
When he wings away,
Brook and poplar mourn a lover!
Sighing well-a-day!
Ah! the doing and undoing
That the rogue could tell,
When the breeze is out a-wooing,
Who can woo so well? ”

“ He sipped no sup, and he craved no crumb,
As he sighed for the love of a ladye! ”

“ WILLOW WALY!
He.⁠PRITHEE, pretty maiden—prithee, tell me true
⁠ (Hey, but I'm doleful, willow, willow waly!)
Have you e'er a lover a-dangling after you?
⁠Hey, willow waly O!
⁠I fain would discover
⁠If you have a lover?
⁠Hey, willow waly O!
She.⁠Gentle sir, my heart is frolicsome and free—
⁠ (Hey, but he's doleful, willow, willow waly!)
Nobody I care for comes a-courting me—
⁠Hey, willow waly O!
⁠Nobody I care for
⁠Comes a-courting—therefore,
⁠Hey, willow waly O!
He.⁠Prithee, pretty maiden, will you marry me?
⁠ (Hey, but I'm hopeful, willow, willow waly!) ”

“ BRAID the raven hair,
⁠Weave the supple tress,
Deck the maiden fair
In her loveliness;
Paint the pretty face,
Dye the coral lip,
Emphasize the grace
Of her ladyship!
Art and nature, thus allied,
Go to make a pretty bride! ”

“ It cannot be blissful, as 'tis said,
Or why are their eyes so wondrous red?
If love is a thorn, they show no wit
Who foolishly hug and foster it.
If love is a weed, how simple they
Who gather and gather it, day by day! ”

“ Failure brings no kind of stigma—
Dance we to another tune!
String the lyre and fill the cup,
Lest on sorrow we should sup;
Hop and skip to Fancy’s fiddle,
Hands across and down the middle—
Life’s perhaps the only riddle
That we shrink from giving up! ”

“ Of maiden grace
You will be blind,
And will not glance
By any chance
On womankind!
If you are wise,
You'll shut your eyes
'Till we arrive,
And not address
A lady less
Than forty-five ”

“ Sad is the hour when sets the Sun—
Dark is the night to Earth's poor daughters
When to the ark the wearied one
Flies from the empty waste of waters!
Heavy the sorrow that bows the head
When Love is alive and Hope is dead! ”

“ THE Law is the true embodiment
⁠Of everything that's excellent.
It has no kind of fault or flaw,
And I, my lords, embody the Law.
The constitutional guardian I
Of pretty young Wards in Chancery,
All very agreeable girls—and none
Are over the age of twenty-one. ”

“ That any civilian
My figure and form will surpass.
Gold lace has a charm for the fair,
And I've plenty of that, and to spare,
While a lover's professions,
When uttered in Hessians,
Are eloquent everywhere! ”

“ And while the House of Peers withholds
Its legislative hand,
And noble statesmen do not itch
To interfere with matters which
They do not understand,
As bright will shine Great Britain's rays,
As in King George's glorious days! ”

“ I've endeavoured to define.
Live to love and love to live—
You will ripen at your ease,
Growing on the sunny side—
Fate has nothing more to give.
You're a dainty man to please
If you are not satisfied. ”

“ AS some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
⁠I've got a little list—I've got a little list
Of social offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed—who never would be missed! ”