From Iolanthe
Libretto by William S. Gilbert, Music by Sir Arthur Sullivan
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—and the bedclothes conspire of your 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 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 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 by, 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 pastrycook 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 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!
Midi file sequenced by Michael Petri (petrim.AT.faa.gov) (13k, zipped with text)
Gilbert and Sullivan at Wikipedia