Mother Goose for Grownups/The Discouraging Discovery of Little Jack Horner
A knack almost incredible for dealing with an edible
Jack Horner’s elder sister was acknowledged to display;
She labored hard and zealously, but always guarded jealously
The secrets of the dishes she invented every day.
She’d take some indigestible, unpopular comestible
And to its better nature would so tenderly appeal
That Jack invoked a benison upon a haunch of venison,
When ready she was serving him a little leg of veal!
Jack said she was a miracle. The word was not satirical,
For daily climbing upward, she excelled herself at last:
The acme of facility, the zenith of ability
Was what she gave her brother for his Christmas Day repast.
He dined that evening eagerly and anything but meagerly,
And when he’d finished had his salad and his quart of Extra Dry,
With sisterly benignity, and just a touch of dignity,
She placed upon the table an unutterable pie!
Unflagging pertinacity, and technical sagacity,
Long nights of sleepless vigil, and long days of constant care
Had been involved in making it, improving it, and baking it,
Until of other pies it was the wonder and despair:
So princely and so prominent, so solemn, so predominant
It looked upon the table, that, with fascinated eye,
The youth, with sudden wonder struck, electrified, and thunder struck,
Could only stammer stupidly: “Oh Golly! What a pie!”
In view of his satiety, it almost seemed impiety,
To carve this crowning triumph of a culinary life,
But, braced by his avidity, with sudden intrepidity
He broke its dome imposing with a common kitchen knife.
Ah, hideous fatality! for when with eager palate he
Commenced to eat, he happened on an accident uncouth,
And cried with stifled moan: “Of it one plum I tried. The stone of it
Had never been extracted, and I’ve broke a wisdom tooth!”
Jack’s sister wept effusively, but loudly and abusively
His unreserved opinion of her talents he proclaimed;
He called her names like “driveller” and “simpleton” and “sniveller,”
And others, which to mention I am really too ashamed.
The moral: It is saddening, embarrassing, and maddening
A stone to strike in what you thought was paste. One thing alone
Than this mischance is crueller, and that is for a jeweller
To strike but paste in what he fondly thought to be a stone.