Peter the Piccaninny

He has a name which cant be brought     Within the sphere of metre;     But, as hes Peter by report,     Ill trot him out as Peter.     I call him mine; but dont suppose     That Im his dad, O reader!     My wife has got a Norman nose     She reads the tales of Ouida.     I never loved a nigger belle     My tastes are too aesthetic!     The perfume from a gin is well,     A rather strong emetic.     But, seeing that my theme is Pete,     This verse will be the neater     If I keep on the proper beat,     And stick throughout to Peter.     We picked him up the Lord knows where!     At noon we came across him     Asleep beside a hunk of bear     His paunch was bulged with possum.     (Last stanza will not bear, I own,     A pressure analytic;     But bard whose weight is fourteen stone,     Is apt to thump the critic.)     We asked the kid to give his name:     He didnt seem too willing     The darkey played the darkeys game     We tipped him with a shilling!     We tipped him with a shining bob     No Tommy Dodd, believe us.     We didnt tumble to his job     Ah, why did Pete deceive us!     I, being, as Ive said, a bard,     Resolved at once to foster     This mite whose length was just a yard     This portable impostor!     This babe I spoke in Wordsworths tone     (See Wordsworths Lucy, neighbour)     Ill make a darling of my own;     And hell repay my labour.     Hell grow as gentle as a fawn     As quiet as the blossoms     That beautify a land of lawn     Hell eat no more opossums.     The child I to myself will take     In a paternal manner;     And ah! he will not swallow snake     In future, or goanna.     Will you reside with me, my dear?     I asked in accents mellow     The nigger grinned from ear to ear,     And said, All right, old fellow!     And so my Pete was taken home     My pretty piccaninny!     And, not to speak of soap or comb,     His cleansing cost a guinea.     But hang expenses! I exclaimed,     Ill give him education:     A nig is better when hes tamed,     Perhaps, than a Caucasian.     Ethnologists are in the wrong     About our sable brothers;     And I intend to stop the song     Of Pickering and others.     Alas, I didnt do it though!     Old Pickerings conclusions     Were to the point, as issues show,     And mine were mere delusions.     My inky pet was clothed and fed     For months exceeding forty;     But to the end, it must be said,     His ways were very naughty.     When told about the Land of Morn     Above this world of Mammon,     Hed shout, with an emphatic scorn,     Ah, gammon, gammon, gammon!     He never lingered, like the bard,     To sniff at rose expanding.     Me like, he said, em cattle-yard     Fine smell de smell of branding!     The soul of man, I tried to show,     Went up beyond our vision.     You ebber see dat fellow go?     He asked in sheer derision.     In short, it soon occurred to me     This kid of six or seven,     Who wouldnt learn his A B C,     Was hardly ripe for heaven.     He never lost his appetite     He bigger grew, and bigger;     And proved, with every inch of height,     A nigger is a nigger.     And, looking from this moment back,     I have a strong persuasion     That, after all, a finished black     Is not the clean Caucasian.     Dear Peter from my threshold went,     One morning in the body:     He dropped me, to oblige a gent     A gent with spear and waddy!     He shelved me for a boomerang     We never had a quarrel;     And, if a moral here doth hang,     Why let it hang the moral!     My mournful tale its course has run     My Pete, when last I spied him,     Was eating possum underdone:     He had his gin beside him.