SAILORS come To the drum Out of Babylon; Hobby-horses Foam, the dumb Sky rhinoceros-glum Watched the courses of the breakers' rocking-horses and with Glaucis, Lady Venus on the settee of the horsehair sea! Where Lord Tennyson in laurels wrote a gloria free, In a borealic iceberg came Victoria; she Knew Prince Albert's tall memorial took the colours of the floreal And the borealic iceberg; floating on they see New-arisen Madam Venus for whose sake from far Came the fat and zebra'd emperor from Zanzibar Where like golden bouquets lay far Asia, Africa, Cathay, All laid before that shady lady by the fibroid Shah. Captain Fracasse stout as any water-butt came, stood With Sir Bacchus both a-drinking the black tarr'd grapes' blood Plucked among the tartan leafage By the furry wind whose grief age Could not wither -- like a squirrel with a gold star-nut. Queen Victoria sitting shocked upon the rocking horse Of a wave said to the Laureate, "This minx of course Is as sharp as any lynx and blacker-deeper than the drinks and quite as Hot as any hottentot, without remorse! For the minx," Said she, "And the drinks, You can see Are hot as any hottentot and not the goods for me!" | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ELEGIAC SONNET: 4. TO THE MOON by CHARLOTTE SMITH A LULLABY by LAWRENCE ALMA-TADEMA THE CHILD AN' THE MOWERS by WILLIAM BARNES TWO VOICES by VALERY YAKOVLEVICH BRYUSOV THE WIFES' TRAGEDY by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON SONGS OF THE SEA CHILDREN: 32 by BLISS CARMAN THE CANTERBURY TALES: PROLOGUE TO SIR THOPAS by GEOFFREY CHAUCER |