Vii--The Last Case Of Gin

To Loren Palmer

The Tullywub is singing by the Willywinkle's grotto His passionate devotion, though he knows he hadn't ought to, And she wipes away a teardrop with a little furtive fin; She is fluttered, but she's frightened by his outburst of emotion In their somewhat formal corner of a rather proper ocean-- And I can understand 'em, for I've got a crate of gin. Interpretative theses on the psychochemic state Induced in the batrachia by fear or love or hate I find are rather easy since I've opened up the crate, And I'm gonna be a scientist by morning. A Willywinkle's seldom a sprightly thing or elfish, But morally she's rigid as the most exclusive shell- fish;

She cans her rash admirer, but she cans him with a sigh! An analytic novel might be reared upon the basis Of a very earnest study of the looks upon their faces And their brave renunciation when they sobbed and said good-by. I claim that the transmission of their fortitude and pain To succeeding generations will improve the moral strain Of the species here considered and their loss result in gain; And I wish I had some Angostura Bitters! I have a strong impression of the immanence of morals In this quite extensive cosmos, from castor beans to corals, And Science and Religion, I will tell the world, are one; I should prove it, gentle reader, had we leisure time before us, I should prove it or expire in the act of hurling Taurus-- I wonder where the dickens has that silly corkscrew gone? I find, as I grow older, the pert Subliminal Keeps butting in to chatter with egoistic gall: Romance I meditated; this isn't that at all-- But anyhow I have some limes and siphons!