Ogres and Pygmies
Those famous men of old, the Ogres
They had long beards and stinking arm-pits.
They were wide-mouthed, long-yarded and great-bellied
Yet of no taller stature, Sirs, than you.
They lived on Ogre-Strand, which was no place
But the churl’s terror of their proud extent.
Where every foot was three-and-thirty inches,
And every penny bought a whole sheep.
Now of their company none survive, not one,
The times being, thank God, unfavourable
To all but nightmare shadows of them.
Their images stand howling in the waste,
(The winds enforced against their wide mouths)
whose granite haunches king and priest must yearly
Buss and their cold knobbled knees.
So many feats they did to admiration:
With their enormous lips they sang louder
Than ten cathedral choirs, and with their grand yards
Stormed the most rare and obstinate maidenheads,
With their strong-gutted and capacious bellies
Digested stones and glass like ostriches.
They dug great pits and heaped great cairns,
Deflected rivers, slew whole armies,
And hammered judgments for posterity
For the sweet cupid-lipped and tassel-yarded
Delicate-stomached dwellers
In Pygmy Alley, where with brooding on them
A foot is shrunk to seven inches
And twelve-pence will not buy a spare rib.
And who would choose between Ogres and Pygmies
The thundering text, the snivelling commentary
Reading between such covers he will likely
Prove his own disproportion and not laugh.
