Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

Humorous Poems: III. Parodies: Imitations

The Modern House That Jack Built

Anonymous

BEHOLD the mansion reared by dædal Jack.

See the malt, stored in many a plethoric sack,

In the proud cirque of Ivan’s bivouac.

Mark how the rat’s felonious fangs invade

The golden stores in John’s pavilion laid.

Anon, with velvet foot and Tarquin strides,

Subtle grimalkin to his quarry glides,—

Grimalkin grim, that slew the fierce rodent

Whose tooth insidious Johann’s sackcloth rent.

Lo! now the deep-mouthed canine foe’s assault,

That vexed the avenger of the stolen malt;

Stored in the hallowed precincts of the hall

That rose complete at Jack’s creative call.

Here stalks the impetuous cow, with the crumpled horn,

Whereon the exacerbating hound was torn,

Who bayed the feline slaughter-beast, that slew

The rat predaceous, whose keen fangs ran through

The textile fibres that involved the grain

That lay in Hans’ inviolate domain.

Here walks forlorn the damsel crowned with rue,

Lactiferous spoils from vaccine dugs who drew,

Of that corniculate beast whose tortuous horn

Tossed to the clouds, in fierce vindictive scorn,

The harrowing hound, whose braggart bark and stir

Arched the lithe spine and reared the indignant fur

Of puss, that with verminicidal claw

Struck the weird rat, in whose insatiate maw

Lay reeking malt, that erst in Ivan’s courts we saw.

Robed in senescent garb, that seemed, in sooth,

Too long a prey to Chronos’ iron tooth,

Behold the man whose amorous lips incline,

Full with young Eros’ osculative sign,

To the lorn maiden, whose lac-albic hands

Drew albu-lactic wealth from lacteal glands

Of the immortal bovine, by whose horn,

Distort, to realm ethereal was borne

The beast catulean, vexer of that sly

Ulysses quadrupedal who made die

The old mordacious rat, that dared devour

Antecedaneous ale in John’s domestic bower.

Lo! here, with hirsute honors doffed, succinct

Of saponaceous locks, the priest who linked

In Hymen’s golden bands the torn unthrift,

Whose means exiguous stared from many a rift,

Even as he kissed the virgin all forlorn,

Who milked the cow with the implicated horn,

Who in fine wrath the canine torturer skied,

That dared to vex the insidious muricide,

Who let auroral effluence through the pelt

Of the sly rat that robbed the palace Jack had built.

The loud cantankerous Shanghai comes at last,

Whose shouts aroused the shorn ecclesiast,

Who sealed the vows of Hymen’s sacrament

To him who, robed in garments indigent,

Exosculates the damsel lachrymose,

The emulgator of that hornèd brute morose

That tossed the dog that worried the cat that kilt

The rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.