Hornpipe

Sailors come

To the drum

Out of Babylon;

Hobby-horses

Foam, the dumb

Sky rhinoceros-glum

Watched the courses of the

breakers' rocking-horses and with

Glaucis,

Lady Venus on the settee of the

horsehair sea!

Where Lord Tennyson in laurels

wrote a gloria free,

In a borealic iceberg came Victoria; she

Knew Prince Albert's tall memorial

took the colours of the floreal

And the borealic iceberg; floating

on they see

New-arisen Madam Venus for

whose sake from far

Came the fat zebra'd emperor

from Zanzibar

Where like golden bouquets lay far

Asia, Africa, Cathay,

All laid before that shady lady by

the fibroid Shah.

Captain Fracasse stout as any water -

butt came, stood

With Sir Bacchus both a-drinking

the black tarr'd grapes' blood

Plucked among the tartan leafage

By the furry wind whose grief age

Could not wither -

like a squirrel with a gold star-nut.

Queen Victoria sitting shocked

upon a rocking horse

Of a wave said to the Laureate,

"This minx of course

Is as sharp as a lynx and blacker -

deeper than the drinks and

quite as

Hot as any Hottentot, without

remorse!

For the minx,"

Said she,

"And the drinks,

You can see

Are hot as any hottentot and not

the goods for me!"