I Sit in the Midst

Given from the Cuckoo’s Nest
to the Beloved Infant—
Greeting

1 
I sit in the midst of my study
   With cake crumbs adorning my hair 
My boots are confoundedly muddy
   And are leaving wet marks on the chair
That supports the fair feet of your Ruddy 
   As he rests with stale cake in his hair. 
2 
I am full of a sense of importance,  
   Of lobster, cream, pilchards and cake
And I feel in my—bosom grim portents 
   That herald the course of an ache
I remark I am racked with grim portents
   That usher abdominal ache.
3 
Yet I write you this letter fraternal 
   I indite you this brotherly note
Tho' my tortures are waxing infernal
   I write as I ever have wrote 
Observe that my tone is fraternal
   And I write as I ever have wrote.
4 
Be it known to you fairest of females 
   That dulness is dominant here
And there's little to interest we males 
   Whose smallness is lesser than beer
I complain that in spite of our three mails 
   Per diem there comes nothing here.
5 
Moreover the weather is wondrous
   And skies that should rain only shine
We have dry chalk and gravel roads under us
   And the sun is at work before nine
I may state as a fact still more wondrous
   I too am at work before nine.
6 
And further to tell you, the Kingsley
   Memorial College is built
And throughout it strange carpenters' things lie
   And paint-pots are lavishly spilt
Id est they are fitting the Kingsley
   With hoardings & carvings and gilt.
7 
By a special train chartered at Bristol
   The guilt comes, some two hundred strong
The sons of land-owners who missed all
   Their rents when the Green Isle went wrong 
To be plain, all the boys come from Bristol 
   By the packets of Vermouth and Long. 
8 
We have purchased some tea-pots of delft ware
   We found in a Bideford shop
That crammed on the back of a shelf were
   (Mrs Morten's–she takes things to p-p)
In a shop where a friend & myself were
   Knocking round as we do in a shop.
9 
 I have got three most quaintest of glasses 
   For Miss Winnard, (I'll send 'em along)
Whose shape all description surpasses
   And I purchased them all for a song 
Which means that the price of those glasses
   Was entirely other than long.
10 
And now since the sun is descending 
   I must finish my brotherly note
I must make of beginning an ending 
   I must finish this versified note
Take a picture I've drawn as an ending
   Most fit for a metrical note.

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