Lord Chancellor's Nightmare Song

Love unrequited, robs me of me rest

Love, hopeless love, my ardent soul encumbers

Love, nightmare like, lies heavy on me chest

And weaves itself into my midnight slumbers

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 bed-clothes conspire

Of usual slumber to plunder you:

First your counter-pane 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

'Til there's nothing 'twixt you and the ticking

Then the bed-clothes 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 it's usual angle!

Well, you get some repose in the form of a dose

With hot eye-balls 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 sucking a treat (penny ice and cold meat)

To a party of friends and relations

They're a ravenous horde, and they all come 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 undersiz'd and you don't feel surpris'd

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 Sal'sbury 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 good 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 green grocer tree

You get grapes and green pea, cauliflower, pine apple and cranberries

While the pastry cook plant cherry brandy

Will grant apple puffs, and three corners, and banburys;

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 and 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 acreep, for your left leg's asleep

A 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

The general sense that you haven't been sleeping in clover;

But the darkness has pass'd, 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!