How Jack Made the Giants Uncommonly Sore

Of all the ill-fatedBoys ever createdYoung Jack was the wretchedest lad:An emphatic, erratic,Dogmatic fanaticWas foisted upon him as dad!From the time he could walk,And before he could talk,His wearisome training began,On a highly barbarian,Disciplinarian,Nearly TartareanPlan!

He taught him some Raleigh,And some of Macaulay,Till all of “Horatius” he knew,And the drastic, sarcastic,Fantastic, scholasticPhilippics of “Junius,” too.He made him learn lotsOf the poems of Watts,And frequently said he ignored,On principle, any son’sTitle to benisonsTill he’d learned Tennyson’s“Maud.”

“For these are the giantsOf thought and of science,”He said in his positive way:“So weigh them, obey them,Display them, and lay themTo heart in your infancy’s day!”Jack made no reply,But he said on the slyAn eloquent word, that had comeFrom a quite indefensible,Most reprehensible,But indispensableChum.

By the time he was twentyJack had such a plentyOf books and paternal advice,Though seedy and needy,Indeed he was greedyFor vengeance, whatever the price!In the editor’s seatOf a critical sheetHe found the revenge that he sought;And, with sterling appliance ofMind, wrote defiance ofAll of the giants ofThought.

He’d thunder and grumbleAt high and at humbleUntil he became, in a while,Mordacious, pugnacious,Rapacious. Good gracious!They called him the Yankee Carlyle!But he never took restOn his quarrelsome questOf the giants, both mighty and small.He slated, distorted them,Hanged them and quartered them,Till he had slaughtered themAll.

And this is The Moral that lies in the verse:If you have a go farther, you’re apt to fareworse.(When you turn it around it is different rather: —You’re not apt to go worse if you have a fairfather!)