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To The Sun
Great Phoebus ! thou on whom we all depend
For countless joys which thou alone canst send,
A saturated mortal to thee speaks,
And for an answer to this question seeks —
Where hast thou been through all these sloppy weeks?
Oh ! by sweet thoughts of punt and shade and pipe.
By horrid dreams of Fruit far, far from ripe,
By hopes of pleasures culled throughout the “Long,”
By thoughts of Margate with its ni^er song.
By trips proposed upon the “Continong”;
Shine forth, O mighty Sun ! and turn thy face
On match, regatta, party, pic-nic, race;
Dispel the gloom that o’er our island lowers,
And people all the land with countless flowers,
And let us have at least some rainless hours.
Let Bobbies murmur in the Street of Bow,
And swear that on their beat they will not go:
Let Postmen fill our souls with endless fears
That correspondence may get in arrears :
Let thoughts of striking fill our Grenadiers :
Let all these cease from labour, if they like ;
But thou, great Sun-god, go not thou on strike!
Montague Horatio Mostyn Turtle Pigott
(1865–1927)
To The Sun (Poem)
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Editors Note
A haggard youth with glittering eye
Into our presence sped;
He placed these verses on our desk,
A pistol at our head.
Well, we didn’t much want to be bored with his
lead.
So our readers we bore with his verses instead.
Montague Horatio Mostyn Turtle Pigott
(1865–1927)
Editors Note (Poem)
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A Lament
They beat me black; they beat me blue,
Until my rue-
-ful visage would not bear inspection;
They broke me, too,
Though ’twas I who
Was once considered quite perfection.
How things are changed ! I once was great,
But yet of late
IVe fallen from my proud position ;
Hard is my fate,
I’m out of date ;
How altered now is my condition !
How will it end? What’s Fate’s decree?
Perchance Til be
Hung high as Haman by a neck-cord ;
Oh ! pity me,
For here you see
A broken, battered, shattered record.
Montague Horatio Mostyn Turtle Pigott
(1865–1927)
A Lament (Poem)
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A Little Novel
(in four little chapters)
CHAP. I
A little nook in garden shady;
A little squeeze of finger-tips ;
A little question to a lady;
A little “Yes** from rosy lips.
CHAP. II
A little flirting with another;
A little shadow on a blind;
A little tiff, a little bother:
A little bit of Beauty’s mind.
CHAP. III
A little coolness in the greeting;
A little rift within the lute;
A little hour of wild entreating;
A little lady, proudly mute.
CHAP. IV
A little note of sad upbraiding ;
A little poison in a glass;
A little willow-tree o’ershading
A little tomb-stone in the grass.
Montague Horatio Mostyn Turtle Pigott
(1865–1927)
Melody versus Malady (Poem)
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Melody versus Malady
[The Lancet recently discussed the value of music in the
treatment of disease.]
Away with all doctors and physic-concocters !
Down with surgeons and down with physicians !
In future hautboys will replace • doctor’s boys,
And when ailing we’ll send for musicians.
The gentle guitar will soon banish catarrh,
The organ organic diseases ;
The ophicleide serves to establish the nerves,
The mandolin measles appeases.
If you catch influenza just try a cadenza
On the harmless and homely harmonium,
And if you complain of a sprain or a strain
Then summon the soothing euphonium.
Try the cornet for corns and for ague French horns,
And if you should feel very sick or low
Try an air on the lute, a few notes from the flute.
Or the piercing yet popular piccolo.
Montague Horatio Mostyn Turtle Pigott
(1865–1927)
Melody versus Malady (Poem)
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The Philatelist*
(*A man who collects stamps cares for nothing else in the world.)
” O come,” said Music, “come with me ;
To Adelina Patti list;
Melt in her magic melody ” —
“I shan’t !” quoth the Philatelist.
“Come,” said the Gourmand, “come with me.
And try the varied Gatti-list;
I prithee, try Gastronomy” —
“I won’t!” quoth the Philatelist.
” Come,” said the Eightsman, ” come with me”,
And to the merry rattle list;
“Come, join our cheery crew, and we ” —
” Please go!” quoth the Philatelist.
” Come”, said the Farmer, ” come with me”.
And to my lowing cattle list :
“They’re’ slowly winding o’er the lea ” —
” Let them !” quoth the Philatelist.
“Come,” said the Mother, “come with me,
And to my cherub’s prattle list ;
Come, take the babe upon thy knee” —
“No, thanks!” quoth the Philatelist
“Come,” said the Warrior, “come with me,
And to the roar of battle list;
Come, join our valiant company” —
“Not me!” quoth the Philatelist.
“Come,” said Society, “with me,
And to my tittle-tattle list;
“Come, try the World, the Flesh, the D— “
“Get out!” quoth the Philatelist.
Montague Horatio Mostyn Turtle Pigott
(1865–1927)
The Philatelist (Poem)
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The Lion
(Being an essay written by a pupil
in Dame Europa’s School)
The Lion is a kind of Ass,
His silliness is simply crass ;
He’s such a tame, long-suffering beast
You cannot rile him in the least,
For, though he’s very, very strong,
He never will resent a wrong ;
So, though he’s very, very big.
The other beasts don’t care a fig,
But pinch his tail and tweak his ear.
For he won’t mind — He’s such a dear !
They give him most tremendous snubs.
And kill whole litters of his cubs ;
He’ll sometimes give one little roar,
Montague Horatio Mostyn Turtle Pigott
(1865–1927)
The Lion (Poem)
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The hundred best books
First there’s the Bible,
And then the Koran,
Odgers on Libel,
Pope’s Essay on Man,
Confessions of Rousseau,
The Essays of Lamb,
Robinson Crusoe
And Omar Khayyam,
Volumes of Shelley
And venerable Bede,
Machiavelli
And Captain Mayne Reid,
Fox upon Martyrs
And Liddell and Scott,
Stubbs on the Charters,
The works of La Motte,
The Seasons by Thompson,
And Paul de Verlaine,
Theodore Mommsen
And Clemens (Mark Twain),
The Rocks of Hugh Miller,
The Mill on the Floss,
The Poems of Schiller,
The Iliados,
Don Quixote (Cervantes),
La Pucelle by Voltaire,
Inferno (that’s Dante’s),
And Vanity Fair,
Conybeare-Howson,
Brillat-Savarin,
And Baron Munchausen,
Mademoiselle De Maupin,
The Dramas of Marlowe,
The Three Musketeers,
Clarissa Harlowe,
And the Pioneers,
Sterne’s Tristram Shandy,
The Ring and the Book,
And Handy Andy,
and Captain Cook,
The Plato of Jowett,
And Mill’s Pol. Econ.,
The Haunts of Howitt,
The Encheiridion,
Lothair by Disraeli,
And Boccaccio,
The Student’s Paley,
And Westward Ho!
The Pharmacopœia,
Macaulay’s Lays,
Of course The Medea,
And Sheridan’s Plays,
The Odes of Horace,
And Verdant Green,
The Poems of Morris,
The Faery Queen,
The Stones of Venice,
Natural History (White’s),
And then Pendennis,
The Arabian Nights,
Cicero’s Orations,
Plain Tales from the Hills,
The Wealth of Nations,
And Byles on Bills,
As in a Glass Darkly,
Demosthenes’ Crown,
The Treatise of Berkeley,
Tom Hughes’s Tom Brown,
The Mahabharata,
The Humor of Hook,
The Kreutzer Sonata,
And Lalla Rookh,
Great Battles by Creasy,
And Hudibras,
And Midshipman Easy,
And Rasselas,
Shakespear in extenso
And the Æneid,
And Euclid (Colenso),
The Woman Who Did,
Poe’s Tales of Mystery,
Then Rabelais,
Guizot’s French History,
And Men of the Day,
Rienzi, by Lytton,
The Poems of Burns,
The Story of Britain,
The Journey (that’s Sterne’s),
The House of Seven Gables,
Carroll’s Looking-glass,
Æsop his Fables,
And Leaves of Grass,
Departmental Ditties,
The Woman in White,
The Tale of Two Cities,
Ships that Pass in the Night,
Meredith’s Feverel,
Gibbon’s Decline,
Walter Scott’s Peveril,
And—some verses of mine.
Mostyn Turtle Pigott
(1865-1927)
The hundred best books
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