That is the twenty-seventh time to-day!
What is the use of Nobbs's Nasal Spray?
What use my aunt's "unfailing" recipes?
There _is_ no anodyne for this disease--
Thirty, I think! Another hanky, please--
A-tish-oo!
The world is gay; the bee bestrides the rose;
But I blaspheme and madly blow my nose.
For shame, O world! for shame, the heartless bee!
Your sweetest blooms are misery to me;
And as for that condemned acacia-tree--
A-tish-oo!
Oh, could I roam, contented like the sheep,
In sunlit fields where, as it is, I weep;
Oh, to be fashioned like the lower classes,
Who simply revel in the longest grasses,
While I sit lachrymose with coloured glasses--
A-tish-oo!
Fain would I spend my summers high in air;
At least there are no privet-hedges there.
But even then I have no doubt the smell
From slopes celestial of asphodel
Would fill the firmament and give me hell--
A-tish-oo!
They tell me 'tis the man of intellect
The baneful seeds especially affect;
And I that sneeze one million times a year--
I ought to have a notable career,
Though, at the price, an earldom would be dear--
A-tish-oo!
Gladly, indeed, to some less gifted swain
Would I concede my fine but fatal brain,
Could I like him but sniff the jasmine spray
Or couch unmoved within a mile of hay,
And not explode in this exhausting way--
A-tish-oo!
* * * * *
Wanted, a Faith-healer.
Dear Madam,--We have received your enquiry for Sergeant ----, and
wish to inform you that he was transferred to ---- Hospital,
suffering from a slightly sceptic toe. Trusting this information
may be of some value,