The Two Ogres

Good children, list, if you're inclined,     And wicked children too     This pretty ballad is designed     Especially for you.     Two ogres dwelt in Wickham Wold     Each TRAITS distinctive had:     The younger was as good as gold,     The elder was as bad.     A wicked, disobedient son     Was JAMES M'ALPINE, and     A contrast to the elder one,     Good APPLEBODY BLAND.     M'ALPINE brutes like him are few     In greediness delights,     A melancholy victim to     Unchastened appetites.     Good, well-bred children every day     He ravenously ate,     All boys were fish who found their way     Into M'ALPINE'S net:     Boys whose good breeding is innate,     Whose sums are always right;     And boys who don't expostulate     When sent to bed at night;     And kindly boys who never search     The nests of birds of song;     And serious boys for whom, in church,     No sermon is too long.     Contrast with JAMES'S greedy haste     And comprehensive hand,     The nice discriminating taste     Of APPLEBODY BLAND.     BLAND only eats bad boys, who swear     Who CAN behave, but DON'T     Disgraceful lads who say "don't care,"     And "shan't," and "can't," and "won't."     Who wet their shoes and learn to box,     And say what isn't true,     Who bite their nails and jam their frocks,     And make long noses too;     Who kick a nurse's aged shin,     And sit in sulky mopes;     And boys who twirl poor kittens in     Distracting zoetropes.     But JAMES, when he was quite a youth,     Had often been to school,     And though so bad, to tell the truth,     He wasn't quite a fool.     At logic few with him could vie;     To his peculiar sect     He could propose a fallacy     With singular effect.     So, when his Mentors said, "Expound     Why eat good children why?"     Upon his Mentors he would round     With this absurd reply:     "I have been taught to love the good     The pure the unalloyed     And wicked boys, I've understood,     I always should avoid.     "Why do I eat good children why?     Because I love them so!"     (But this was empty sophistry,     As your Papa can show.)     Now, though the learning of his friends     Was truly not immense,     They had a way of fitting ends     By rule of common sense.     "Away, away!" his Mentors cried,     "Thou uncongenial pest!     A quirk's a thing we can't abide,     A quibble we detest!     "A fallacy in your reply     Our intellect descries,     Although we don't pretend to spy     Exactly where it lies.     "In misery and penal woes     Must end a glutton's joys;     And learn how ogres punish those     Who dare to eat good boys.     "Secured by fetter, cramp, and chain,     And gagged securely so     You shall be placed in Drury Lane,     Where only good lads go.     "Surrounded there by virtuous boys,     You'll suffer torture wus     Than that which constantly annoys     Disgraceful TANTALUS.     ("If you would learn the woes that vex     Poor TANTALUS, down there,     Pray borrow of Papa an ex-     Purgated LEMPRIERE.)     "But as for BLAND who, as it seems,     Eats only naughty boys,     We've planned a recompense that teems     With gastronomic joys.     "Where wicked youths in crowds are stowed     He shall unquestioned rule,     And have the run of Hackney Road     Reformatory School!"