Nightmare from Iolanthe, A. 
By Gilbert, William Schwenck. 


When you're lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is taboo'd by 
anxiety,
I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in without 
impropriety;
For your brain is on fire -the bedclothes conspire of usual slumber to plunder 
you:
First your counterpane goes and uncovers your toes, and your sheet slips 
demurely from under you;
Then the blanketing tickles -you feel like mixed pickles, so terrible sharp is 
the pricking.
And you're hot, and you're cross, and you tumble and toss till there's nothing 
'twixt you and the ticking.
Then the bedclothes all creep to the ground in a heap, and you pick 'em all up 
in a tangle;
Next your pillow resigns and politely declines to remain at its usual angle!
Well, you get some repose in the form of a doze, with hot eyeballs and head 
ever aching,
But your slumbering teems with such horrible dreams that you'd very much 
better be waking;
For you dream you are crossing the Channel, and tossing about in a steamer 
from Harwich,
Which is something between a large bathing-machine and a very small 
second-class carriage:
And you're giving a treat (penny ice and cold meat) to a party of friends and 
relations - 
They're a ravenous horde -and they all came on board at Sloane Square and 
South Kensington Stations.
And bound on that journey you find your attorney (who started that morning 
from Devon);
He's a bit undersized, and you don't feel surprised when he tells you he's 
only eleven.
Well, you're driving like mad with this singular lad (by the bye the ship's 
now a four-wheeler),
And you're playing round games, and he calls you bad names when you tell him 
that "ties pay the dealer";
But this you can't stand, so you throw up your hand, and you find you're as 
cold as an icicle,
In your shirt and your socks (the black silk with gold clocks), crossing 
Salisbury Plain on a bicycle:
And he and the crew are on bicycles too -which they've somehow or other 
invested in - 
And he's telling the tars all the particulars of a company he's interested in - 
It's a scheme of devices, to get at low prices, all goods from cough mixtures 
to cables
(Which tickled the sailors) by treating retailers as though they were all 
vegetables - 
You get a good spadesman to plant a small tradesman (first take of his boots 
with a boot-tree),
And his legs will take root, and his fingers will shoot, and they'll blossom 
and bud like a fruit-tree - 
From the greengrocer tree you get grapes and green pea, cauliflower, 
pineapple, and cranberries,
While the pastry-cook plant cherry-brandy will grant - apple puffs, and three 
corners, and banberries - 
The shares are a penny, and ever so many are taken by Rothschild and Baring,
And just as a few are allotted to you, you awake with a shudder despairing - 
You're a regular wreck, with a crick in your neck, and no wonder you're sore, 
for your head's on the floor, and you've needles and pins from your soles to 
your shins, and your flesh is a-creep, for your left leg's asleep, and you've 
cramp in your toes, and a fly on your nose, and some fluff in your lung, and a 
feverish tongue, and a thirst that's intense, and a general sense that you 
haven't been sleeping in clover;
But the darkness has passed, and it's daylight at last, and the night has been 
long -ditto, ditto my song -and thank goodness they're both of them over!