t a period when knights were as common as days (A pun that is somewhat rheumatic), They pranced and cavorted on chestnuts and grays, On milk-white Arabians, and beautiful bays, (Equestrian bays, not aquatic). And foremost of all in the deeds of a knight, Chivalric, dashing, and fearless, Down-putting the wrong and up-setting the right, The paragon champion, the peerless,
And smiter of Saracen bones, Was Sir Christopher Jenkinson Jones.
Now “Chris,” as his intimates called him for short, (If very familiar, “Chrissie”), Considered the sportiest game of all sport Was tackling wild monsters of every sort, Which kept him most hustlingly busy; For dragons, and griffins, and hippogriffs grim, Were thicker than flies in that region; They carried off people, fat, medium, and slim, To forest, and mountain, and cavern-holes dim, In numbers amounting to legion. And roused by their captives’ loud groans, Was Sir Christopher Jenkinson Jones.
One evening, when wearied with toils of the chase— An evening of bright hunter’s moontime— Our hero drew rein in a still, woodsy place, Where fain would he rest him, and slumber a space, Having slain ninety monsters since noontime. His chestnut he tied to a horse-chestnut tree, (A natural bond of connection), Then, having his armor-canned body pried free, His limbs he outstretched, and with yawns, one, two, three, Set forward in Nodland’s direction; And soon, in rich baritone tones, Snored Sir Christopher Jenkinson Jones.
Not long had this snore been outbooming, before An answering challenge came sounding; He sprang to his feet, as with oncoming roar, A creature with blazing eyes down on him bore, With terrible leaping and bounding! No nightmare that ever climbed up on your bed Could mate with this fearsome creation: Of iron and brass was its big, bulgy head, Its body was colored a fiery red, Its feet pranced in rapid rotation. (Prepare now your last mortal moans, Bold Sir Christopher Jenkinson Jones.)
But Christopher moaned not one least little mite; He seized on his lance, tried and trusted, And just as the beast at his head made a bite, He punctured its paws, fore, hind, left, and right, And both of its eye-lamps bangbusted ! Thus crippled, and blind, and exploding with rage, Did the Automobilicus perish. (The rest of the tale you have guessed, I ’ll engage: How the knight was so tired that he dreamed of an age When rubber-tired monsters would flourish.) So leave we, where deeply he drones, Brave Sir Christopher Jenkinson Jones.
