Poets, Painters, Puddings

Poets, painters, and puddings; these three     Make up the World as it ought to be.     Poets make faces     And sudden grimaces:     They twit you, and spit you     On words: then admit you     To heaven or hell     By the tales that they tell.     Painters are gay     As young rabbits in May:     They buy jolly mugs,     Bowls, pictures, and jugs:     The things round their necks     Are lively with checks,     (For they like something red     As a frame for the head):     Or they'll curse you with oaths,     That tear holes in your clothes.     (With nothing to mend them     You'd best not offend them.)     Puddings should be     Full of currants, for me:     Boiled in a pail,     Tied in the tail     Of an old bleached shirt:     So hot that they hurt,     So huge that they last     From the dim, distant past     Until the crack o' doom     Lift the roof off the room.     Poets, painters, and puddings; these three     Crown the day as it crowned should be.