The Motriot

(After Robert Browning)

'It was chickens, chickens, all the way, With children crossing the road like mad; Police disguised in the hedgerows lay, Stop-watches and large white flags they had, At nine o'clock o' this very day.

'I broke the record to Tunbridge Wells, And I shouted aloud, to all concerned, "Give room, good folk, do you hear my bells?" But my motor skidded and overturned; Then exploded--and afterwards, what smells!

'Alack! it was I rode over the son Of a butcher; rolled him all of a heap! Nought man could do did I leave undone; And I thought that butcher's boys were cheap,-- But this, poor man, 'twas his only one.

'There's nobody in my motor now,-- Just a tangled car in the ditch upset; For the fun of the fair is, all allow, At the County Court, or, better yet, By the very foot of the dock, I trow.

. . . . .

'Thus I entered, and thus I go; In Court the magistrate sternly said, "Five guineas fine, and the costs you owe!" I might not question, so promptly paid. Henceforth I walk; I am safer so.'