Mother Goose for Grownups/The Inexcusable Improbity of Tom, the Piper's Son
A Paris butcher kept a shop
Upon the river’s bank
Where you could buy a mutton chop
Or two for half a franc.
The little shop was spruce and neat,
In view of all who trod the street
The decorated joints of meat
Were hung up in a rank.
This Gallic butcher led a life
Of highly moral tone;
He never raised his voice in strife,
He never drank alone:
He simply sat outside his door
And slept from eight o’clock to four;
The more he slept, so much the more
To slumber he was prone.
One day outside his shop he put
A pig he meant to stuff,
And carefully around each foot
He pinned a paper ruff,
But, while a watch he should have kept,
His habit conquered, and he slept,
And for a thief who was adept
That surely was enough.
A Scottish piper dwelt near by,
Whose one ungracious son
Beheld that pig and murmured: “Why,
No sooner said than done!
It seems to me that this I need.”
And grasping it, with all his speed
Across the Pont des Invalides
He started on a run.
Then, turning sharply to the right,
Without a thought of risk,
He fled. ’Tis fair to call his flight
Inordinately brisk.
But now the town was all astir,
In vain his feet he strove to spur,
They caught him, shouting: “Au voleur!”
Beside the obelisk
The breathless butcher cried: “A mort!”
The crowd said: “Conspuez!”
And some: “A bas!” and half a score
Responded: “Vive l’armee!”
While grim gendarmes with piercing eye,
And stern remarks about: “Canaille!”
The pig abstracted on the sly.
Such is the Gallic way!
The piper’s offspring, his defeat
Deep-rooted in his heart
A revolutionary sheet
Proceeded then to start.
Thenceforward every evening he
In leaders scathed the Ministry,
And wished he could accomplish the
Return of Bonaparte.
The moral is that when the press
Begins to rave and shout
It’s often difficult to guess
What it is all about.
The editor we strive to pin,
But we can never find him in.
What startling knowledge we should win
If we could find him out!