Page:Songs of Simple Simon.pdf/1

 OU may laugh if you will at this song of mine,
 * You may greet my tale with a sneer,

But you’ll never meet with so moving a lay
 * As the Tale of the Bandolier.

A handsome young Bandolier was he
 * (And they can be gorgeously gay),

And full of spirit, and blithe and free,
 * Was the Bandolier of my lay.

But, alas! that we cannot all perfect be!—
 * I pause to remove a tear—

He was—I grieve to say it—he was
 * A Walloping Bandolier!

Now a Bandolier who wallops, you know,
 * Is not a respectable person;

And a delicate subject he is, by the way,
 * For a poet to have to write verse on.

But with this particular Bandolier
 * It was not an original habit,

For to walloping, clearly, he ne’er had been prone
 * If it hadn’t been for the Rabbit!

For one dark, dark night, when no moon was seen,
 * When all was still on the sea,

The Bad Rabbit came to the Bandolier
 * And whispered, “Oh, come with me!

“Oh, come with me to the dark sea-shore, Where the waves break soft on the sand,
 * And there you shall see a wonderful sight!”
 * And he seized the Bandolier’s hand.

Away they went to the lonely beach,
 * And they crouched down behind a rock,

And—I know not what sight the Bandolier saw,
 * But he never got over the shock!

Some say that they witnessed a Mermaids’ Dance,
 * Some say that they saw the Graboon;

Some say that they went in an ice-cream boat
 * To visit the Man in the Moon.

They may be right or they may be wrong,
 * The truth we never shall know;

For the Rabbit has never been heard of since,
 * He has gone where the Bad Rabbits go.

And the Bandolier sits weeping alone
 * On the top of a lonely rock,

And there he wallops the livelong day,
 * For he’s never got over the shock!