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!"
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Authorship:
- by Edith Sitwell (1887 - 1964), appears in Façade, first published 1922 [author's text not yet checked against a primary source]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
- by William Walton (1902 - 1983), "Hornpipe", from Façade [sung text checked 1 time]
Researcher for this page: Dan Eggleston
This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 49
Word count: 208