Political, Satirical and Frivolous Verse
(Air: “Marching Through Georgia”)
Bring your orange banners, boys;
Don’t sit around and mope.
Let’s give a cheer for Ulster’s cause
And down the bloody Pope!
We’re English born and English bred
And England is our hope,
While we live free men in Ulster!
Hurrah, Hurrah, we’ll have no Popery!
Hurrah, Hurrah, Religion shall be free
From Spanish inquisitions
And the Romish heresy,
While we live free men in Ulster!
Any visitor who pays even slight attention to other parts of this Web site will realize that this fierce song is a joke!
(Air: “God Bless America”)
God bless Free Enterprise,
System divine!
Stand beside her, don’t deride her,
Just so long as the profits are mine!
For the Mellons and the DuPonts
And the magnates, one and all,
God made free enterprise,
So we’d rule all!
God made free enterprise
So we’d rule all!
How could he have met with such a fate?
He’d always steered the ship of state
Without a stray consideration
For what might benefit the nation,
Ensuring by such prudent action
That he would offend no faction.
He had a sturdy heart and lungs
And on occasion used two tongues
To explain to all his perfect plan
For satisfying every man:
Economize while increasing waste;
Extoll the firmness he’d erased;
Be powerful, yet abandon arms;
Shout - and ignore - the worst alarms;
In short, strike boldly muted notes,
Guaranteed to attract men’s votes.
How then was this man laid so low?
He was always con and ever pro.
Nothing he did could give offense,
For he did it all without expense
(Though foolish people wonder yet
How no expense brought so much debt).
Then, too, he moved in society
Well-known for strict propriety,
Which gave him presents for his part
In giving it a little start,
From which many rose to such fames
That hearings echoed with their names,
And their acts of more unusual sorts
Gave good employment to the courts.
So let all join now in the praise
Of this good man and his good ways
And of his one and guiding light:
Whatever brings me votes is right.
Written in 1964 in wildly optimistic hopes of the political demise of Lyndon Johnson. The piece was accepted by my high school literary annual. After publication, the principal read it and felt it necessary to make an announcement to the school that there was no allusion to the assassination of President Kennedy. Luckily for me, "zero tolerance" didn't yet exist, or I might never have been allowed to graduate.
I think that God is very great
And also very wise,
For anything I want to do,
He’ll never criticize.
I think that God is very great,
The Alpha and the End.
In fact, if he won’t interfere,
I’ll let him be my friend.
I think that God is very great.
Why, if he’ll lend a hand,
I’ll condescend to take him as
My second-in-command.
I think that God is very great;
He rules the land and sea.
If He’d grow up a little bit,
He’d be as great as Me.
It’s not so hard as it appears
To squiff a keg of fifty beers,
And when you’re done, you’ll have no fears,
So come, let’s drink it down!
It’s not so hard as you might think
To slip completely o’er the brink
And lose your cares and woes in drink,
So come, let’s drink it down!
I knew a lad as young as you.
He never tasted any brew.
His days, I’m sad to say, were few,
So come, let’s drink it down!
But when you are as old as me,
With age and wisdom you will see
That liquor is what sets men free.
So come, let’s drink it down!
(Air: “Billy Boy”)
Oh, where have you been,
U.N. boy, U.N. boy?
Oh, where have you been,
Friendly Gurkha?
I have been out with my tanks
To break some Congo peasants’ ranks -
They were young things;
I could not see them suffer.
Did you fill them full of lead,
U.N. boy, U.N. boy?
Did you fill them full of lead,
Friendly Gurkha?
Yes, I filled them full of lead
Till they all were good and dead -
They were young things;
I could not see them suffer.
Did it take them long to die,
U.N. boy, U.N. boy?
Did it take them long to die,
Friendly Gurkha?
Yes, it took them long to die,
And so I closed my eye -
They were young things;
I could not see them suffer.
Did you tell this all to Thant,
U.N. boy, U.N. boy?
Did you tell this all to Thant,
Friendly Gurkha?
Yes, I told It all to Thant,
And he made me commandant -
They were young things;
I could not see them suffer.
Written in a fine flush of youthful indignation at the United Nations' intervention in the Congo.
(Air: “Maryland, My Maryland”)
Our favorite flag is dollar green -
How we love its wealthy sheen;
And we love too the cross of gold -
Never shall we leave its fold.
We’ll stop the thieves who plot to steal
Our hard-earned wealth and. thus reveal:
Though leftists rant and bankrupts sneer,
We’ll keep the green flag flying here!
With no apologies to the British Labour Party.
(Air: “The Last Time I Saw Paris”)
The last time I saw Lindsay,
“Fun City” was his song,
A city full of bleeding hearts,
Where spending less was wrong.
The last time I saw Lindsay,
He promised Fed’ral aid
Would keep Fun City solvent and
Its bills forever paid.
I watched the taxes climbing,
The welfare costs go wild.
The portent of what was to come
Was patent to a child.
The last time I saw Lindsay,
He still had his old gleam,
And, as he eyed the Senate race,
Said, “Blame it all on Beame.”
Does anybody still remember John Vliet Lindsay?
I didn't think so.
(Air: “Men of Harlech”)
Tory speakers on the rostrum,
Do you hear the left-wing nostrums?
Wave on wave of wild-eyed flotsam
Rises from the floor!
‘Tis the foe of all we cherish!
Shall we let our freedom perish
While programs insane and garish
Disfigure our land?
Strike, fellows, now’s the hour!
Do ye hate the tyrant’s power?
Rise, then, from your lonely bower -
Together we shall stand!
Friends of freedom, on to glory!
While we bear the name of Tory,
Strike for God, for home, for Mory’s,
Freedom and the Right!
Written for the Tory Party at Yale. Alas, I believed that it was one of the great inspirational songs of all time, while nobody else liked it even the tiniest bit.
Virginia has a brand new pad - an attic and five rooms,
But moving in is such a chore, it’s given her the glooms.
She pushes furniture around and never gets it right
And scrubs and paints and polishes from break of dawn till night.
Yes, long after the Sun’s gone down, she’s roaming through the halls
Wond’ring when she’ll have time to hang Les Girls upon the walls.
Her friends also are wondering if they will ever see
Virginia free of paint and dust, and smiling happily -
Ah, will that evening finally come when, free of all the mess
Of moving in, she’ll paint her face and wear - surprise - a dress,
Returning to the battle line, where she’s sore needed now
To save YAF from the Gryphon’s sting and China land from Mao?
Alas! I fear it shall not be - we’ll find her corpse instead
Blue-jeanned, unwigged, sans bra, and drowned inside her water bed!
Written to cheer a friend in the midst of a stressful move. Les Girls was a wall paper pattern. I forget what obscure quarrel among the Illini Right prompted the reference to "the Gryphon's sting".
Whose world this is, I do not know.
The question's unimportant, though,
Irrelevant and too un-mod
For theologians on the go.
My students all must think it odd,
As through my lecturings they nod,
That when I speak of “Christian faith”,
I never, never mention God.
We need a slogan to awake
The world for Revolution's sake.
“Kerygma” will do quite as well
As any other word we take.
And as I trace the parallel
Between Marx and Emmanuel,
I also never mention Hell.
I also never mention Hell.
(with profound apologies to Robert Frost)
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