'Lord Dufferin's staff don't kiss'; Pioneer, Sept 23.
'And don't they really kiss you?' No!
They'd blush if you asked them—ever so!
At the slightest mention of social slips
They turn clear pink to the finger-tips.
Why, anything verging on innocent chaff
Would shock the whole of Lord Dufferin's Staff;
That Solemn and Serious Staff.
'And pray, and what do the Gentlemen drink?'
From Whiskey they fly and from 'Simkin' shrink;
But toast and water they merrily quaff,
For this is the way of Lord Dufferin's Staff;
His rigidly temperate Staff.
'And don't they dance?' They think it wrong,
And wholly unfitting an aid-de-cong;
'Tis all you can do to raise a laugh,
Much less a waltz from Lord Dufferin's Staff,
That Solemn and Serious Staff.
From six in the morning till ten at night,
The study of tongues is their sole delight;
And the Munshi drones over gain and kaf
To that ocean of learning, Lord Dufferin's Staff;
His crushingly erudite Staff.
They seldom dine and they never sup.
They wear their jack-spurs wrong side up.
They always walk with their eyes on the ground,
They call P–l–ti's the 'Devil's pound',
And frequently speak of Balls and dinners
As traps for the Souls of benighted sinners.
'The lusts of the flesh are dross and draff',
Say the whole of this verily Christian Staff,
This painfully Virtuous Staff.
They are never seen on the Annandale course,
They take no stocks in the legs of a horse.
And the smoky din of a lottery night
Is rank perdition in their sight.
In fact, they are all too good by half
For this frivolous world are Lord Dufferin's Staff;
This rigidly temperate, Solemn and Serious,
prudish and passionless Staff.
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