Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, NIGHTMARE, FR. IOLANTHE, by WILLIAM SCHWENCK GILBERT


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

NIGHTMARE, FR. IOLANTHE, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: When you're lying awake with a dismal headache
Last Line: Long—ditto ditto my song—and thank goodness they're both of them over!
Alternate Author Name(s): Gilbert, W. S.
Variant Title(s): Lord Chancellor's Song
Subject(s): Dreams; Headaches; Nightmares


When you're lying awake with a dismal headache and repose is tabooed by anxiety,
I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in without
impropriety;
For your brain is on fire—the bed-clothes conspire of your usual slumber to
plunder you:
First your counterpane goes, and uncovers your toes, and your sheet slips
demurely from under you;
Then the blanketing tickles—you feel like mixed pickles—so terribly
sharp is the pricking,
And you're hot and you're cross, and you tumble and toss till there's nothing
'twixt you and the ticking.
Then the bedclothes all creep to the ground in a heap, and you pick 'em all up
in a tangle;
Next your pillow resigns and politely declines to remain at its usual angle!
Well, you get some repose in the form of a doze, with hot eye-balls and head
ever aching,
But your slumbering teems with such horrible dreams that you'd very much better
be waking:
For you dream you are crossing the Channel, and tossing about in a steamer from
Harwich—
Which is something between a large bathing-machine and a very small second-class
carriage—
And you're giving a treat (penny ice and cold meat) to a party of friends and
relations—
They're a ravenous horde—and they all came on board at Sloane Square and
South Kensington Stations.
And bound on that journey you find your attorney (who started that morning from
Devon);
He's a bit undersized, and you don't feel surprise when he tells you he's only
eleven.
Well, you're driving like mad with that singular lad (by the by, the ship's now
a four-wheeler),
And you're playing round games, and he calls you bad names when you tell him
that "ties pay the dealer";
But this you can't stand, so you throw up your hand, and you find you're as cold
as an icicle,
In your shirt and your socks (the black silk with gold clocks), crossing
Salisbury Plain on a bicycle:
And he and the crew are on bicycles too—which they've somehow or other
invested in—
And he's telling the tars all the particulars of a company he's interested
in—
It's a scheme of devices to get at low prices all goods from cough mixtures to
cables
(Which tickled the sailors), by treating retailers as though they were all
vegetables—
You get a good spadesman to plant a small tradesman (first take off his boots
with a boot-tree),
And his legs will take root, and his fingers will shoot, and they'll blossom and
bud like a fruit-tree—
From the greengrocer tree you get grapes and green pea, cauliflower, pineapple,
and cranberries,
While the pastrycook plant, cherry brandy will grant, apple-puffs, and three-
corners, and Banburys—
The shares are a penny, and ever so many are taken by Rothschild and Baring,
And just as a few are allotted to you, you awake with a shudder despairing—

You're a regular wreck with a crick in your neck, and no wonder you snore, for
your head's on the floor, and you've needles and pins from your soles to your
shins, and your flesh is a-creep, for your left leg's asleep, and you've cramp
in your toes, and a fly in your nose, and some fluff in your lung, and a
feverish tongue, and a thirst that's intense, and a general sense that you
haven't been sleeping in clover;
But the darkness has past, and it's daylight at last, and the night has been
long—ditto ditto my song—and thank goodness they're both of them over!





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