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.

Then the bedclothes all creep to the ground in a heap, and you pick

'em all up in a tangle;

Next your pillow resigns and politely declines to remain at its

usual angle!

Well, you get some repose in the form of a doze, with hot eyeballs

and head ever aching,

But your slumbering teems with such horrible dreams that you'd very

much better be waking;

For you dream you are crossing the Channel, and tossing about in a

steamer from Harwich,

Which is something between a large bathing-machine and a very small

second-class carriage;

And you're giving a treat (penny ice and cold meat) to a party of

friends and relations -

They're a ravenous horde - and they all came on board at Sloane

Square and South Kensington Stations.

And bound on that journey you find your attorney (who started that

morning from Devon);

He's a bit undersized, and you don't feel surprised when he tells

you he's only eleven.

Well, you're driving like mad with this singular lad (by the bye

the ship's now a four-wheeler),

And you're playing round games, and he calls you bad names when you

tell him that "ties pay the dealer";

But this you can't stand, so you throw up your hand, and you find

you're as cold as an icicle,

In your shirt and your socks (the black silk with gold clocks),

crossing Salisbury Plain on a bicycle:

And he and the crew are on bicycles too - which they've somehow or

other invested in -

And he's telling the tars all the particuLARS of a company he's

interested in -

It's a scheme of devices, to get at low prices, all goods from

cough mixtures to cables

(Which tickled the sailors) by treating retailers, as though they

were all vegeTAbles -

You get a good spadesman to plant a small tradesman (first take off

his boots with a boot-tree),

And his legs will take root, and his fingers will shoot, and

they'll blossom and bud like a fruit-tree -

From the greengrocer tree you get grapes and green pea,

cauliflower, pineapple, and cranberries,

While the pastry-cook plant cherry-brandy will grant - apple puffs,

and three-corners, and banberries -

The shares are a penny, and ever so many are taken by ROTHSCHILD

and BARING,

And just as a few are allotted to you, you awake with a shudder

despairing -

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!

~ W.S. Gilbert