William Schwenck Gilbert

William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet, and illustrator best known for his collaboration with composer Arthur Sullivan, which produced fourteen comic operas, including 'H.M.S. Pinafore', 'The Pirates of Penzance', and 'The Mikado'. His works are known for their light-hearted satirical humor and have remained popular for their wit and creativity. Gilbert was also a barrister and produced several serious plays.

November 18, 1836

May 29, 1911

English

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The Modern Major-General.

I am the very pattern of a modern Major-Gineral.
I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral;
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical,
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;
I'm very well acquainted too with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news,
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.
I'm very good at integral and differential calculus,
I know the scientific names of beings animalculous,
In short in matters vegetable, animal and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-Gineral.

I know our mythic history King Arthur's and Sir Caradoc's,
I answer hard acrostics, I've a pretty taste for paradox,
I quote in ele...

William Schwenck Gilbert

The Modest Couple

When man and maiden meet, I like to see a drooping eye,
I always droop my own I am the shyest of the shy.
I'm also fond of bashfulness, and sitting down on thorns,
For modesty's a quality that womankind adorns.

Whenever I am introduced to any pretty maid,
My knees they knock together, just as if I were afraid;
I flutter, and I stammer, and I turn a pleasing red,
For to laugh, and flirt, and ogle I consider most ill-bred.

But still in all these matters, as in other things below,
There is a proper medium, as I'm about to show.
I do not recommend a newly-married pair to try
To carry on as PETER carried on with SARAH BLIGH.

Betrothed they were when very young before they'd learnt to speak
(For SARAH was but six days old, and PETER was a week);
Though littl...

William Schwenck Gilbert

The Mystic Selvagee.

Perhaps already you may know
Sir Blennerhasset Portico?
A Captain in the Navy, he -
A Baronet and K.C.B.
You do? I thought so!
It was that Captain's favourite whim
(A notion not confined to him)
That Rodney was the greatest tar
Who ever wielded capstan-bar.
He had been taught so.

"Benbow! Cornwallis! Hood! Belay!
Compared with Rodney" he would say -
"No other tar is worth a rap!
The great Lord Rodney was the chap
The French to polish!
"Though, mind you, I respect Lord Hood;
Cornwallis, too, was rather good;
Benbow could enemies repel,
Lord Nelson, too, was pretty well -
That is, tol-lol-ish!"

Sir Blennerhasset spent his days
In learning Rodney's little ways,
And closely imitated, too,
His mode of talking to his cr...

William Schwenck Gilbert

The National Anthem

A monarch is pestered with cares,
Though, no doubt, he can often trepan them;
But one comes in a shape he can never escape -
The implacable National Anthem!
Though for quiet and rest he may yearn,
It pursues him at every turn -
No chance of forsaking
Its ROCOCO numbers;
They haunt him when waking -
They poison his slumbers -
Like the Banbury Lady, whom every one knows,
He's cursed with its music wherever he goes!
Though its words but imperfectly rhyme,
And the devil himself couldn't scan them;
With composure polite he endures day and night
That illiterate National Anthem!

It serves a good purpose, I own:
Its strains are devout and impressive -
Its heart-stirring notes raise a lump in our throats
As we burn with devotion excessive:
But...

William Schwenck Gilbert

The Pantomime "Super" To His Mask

Vast empty shell!
Impertinent, preposterous abortion!
With vacant stare,
And ragged hair,
And every feature out of all proportion!
Embodiment of echoing inanity!
Excellent type of simpering insanity!
Unwieldy, clumsy nightmare of humanity!
I ring thy knell!

To-night thou diest,
Beast that destroy'st my heaven-born identity!
Nine weeks of nights,
Before the lights,
Swamped in thine own preposterous nonentity,
I've been ill-treated, cursed, and thrashed diurnally,
Credited for the smile you wear externally
I feel disposed to smash thy face, infernally,
As there thou liest!

I've been thy brain:
I'VE been the brain that lit thy dull concavity!
The human race
Invest MY face
With thine expression of unchecked depravity,

William Schwenck Gilbert

The Perils Of Invisibility.

Old Peter led a wretched life -
Old Peter had a furious wife;
Old Peter too was truly stout,
He measured several yards about.

The little fairy Picklekin
One summer afternoon looked in,
And said, "Old Peter, how de do?
Can I do anything for you?

"I have three gifts the first will give
Unbounded riches while you live;
The second health where'er you be;
The third, invisibility."

"O little fairy Picklekin,"
Old Peter answered with a grin,
"To hesitate would be absurd, -
Undoubtedly I choose the third."

"'Tis yours," the fairy said; "be quite
Invisible to mortal sight
Whene'er you please. Remember me
Most kindly, pray, to MRS. P."

Old MRs. Peter overheard
Wee Picklekin's concluding word,
And, jealous of he...

William Schwenck Gilbert

The Periwinkle Girl

I've often thought that headstrong youths,
Of decent education,
Determine all-important truths
With strange precipitation.

The over-ready victims they,
Of logical illusions,
And in a self-assertive way
They jump at strange conclusions.

Now take my case: Ere sorrow could
My ample forehead wrinkle,
I had determined that I would
Not like to be a winkle.

"A winkle," I would oft advance
With readiness provoking,
"Can seldom flirt, and never dance
Or soothe his mind by smoking."

In short, I spurned the shelly joy,
And spoke with strange decision
Men pointed to me as a boy
Who held them in derision.

But I was young too young, by far
Or I had been more wary,
I knew not then that winkles are
The stock-in-...

William Schwenck Gilbert

The Phantom Curate. A Fable

A BISHOP once I will not name his see
Annoyed his clergy in the mode conventional;
From pulpit shackles never set them free,
And found a sin where sin was unintentional.
All pleasures ended in abuse auricular
The Bishop was so terribly particular.

Though, on the whole, a wise and upright man,
He sought to make of human pleasures clearances;
And form his priests on that much-lauded plan
Which pays undue attention to appearances.
He couldn't do good deeds without a psalm in 'em,
Although, in truth, he bore away the palm in 'em.

Enraged to find a deacon at a dance,
Or catch a curate at some mild frivolity,
He sought by open censure to enhance
Their dread of joining harmless social jollity.
Yet he enjoyed (a fact of notoriety)
The ordinary pleasur...

William Schwenck Gilbert

The Philosophic Pill.

I've wisdom from the East and from the West,
That's subject to no academic rule:
You may find it in the jeering of a jest,
Or distil it from the folly of a fool.
I can teach you with a quip, if I've a mind!
I can trick you into learning with a laugh;
Oh, winnow all my folly, and you'll find
A grain or two of truth among the chaff!

I can set a braggart quailing with a quip,
The upstart I can wither with a whim;
He may wear a merry laugh upon his lip,
But his laughter has an echo that is grim.
When they're offered to the world in merry guise,
Unpleasant truths are swallowed with a will
For he who'd make his fellow creatures wise
Should always gild the philosophic pill!

William Schwenck Gilbert

The Played-Out Humorist

Quixotic is his enterprise, and hopeless his adventure is,
Who seeks for jocularities that haven't yet been said.
The world has joked incessantly for over fifty centuries,
And every joke that's possible has long ago been made.
I started as a humorist with lots of mental fizziness,
But humour is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse;
For my stock-in-trade, my fixtures, and the goodwill of the business
No reasonable offer I am likely to refuse.
And if anybody choose
He may circulate the news
That no reasonable offer I'm likely to refuse.

Oh happy was that humorist - the first that made a pun at all -
Who when a joke occurred to him, however poor and mean,
Was absolutely certain that it never had been done at all -
How popular at dinners must that humorist have been...

William Schwenck Gilbert

The Policeman's Lot.

When a felon's not engaged in his employment
Or maturing his felonious little plans.
His capacity for innocent enjoyment,
Is just as great as any honest man's
Our feelings we with difficulty smother
When constabulary duty's to be done:
Ah, take one consideration with another,
A policeman's lot is not a happy one!

When the enterprising burglar isn't burgling,
When the cut-throat isn't occupied in crime,
He loves to hear the little brook a-gurgling,
And listen to the merry village chime.
When the coster's finished jumping on his mother,
He loves to lie a-basking in the sun:
Ah, take one consideration with another,
The policeman's lot is not a happy one!

William Schwenck Gilbert

The Practical Joker

Oh what a fund of joy jocund lies hid in harmless hoaxes!
What keen enjoyment springs
From cheap and simple things!
What deep delight from sources trite inventive humour coaxes,
That pain and trouble brew
For every one but you!
Gunpowder placed inside its waist improves a mild Havanah,
Its unexpected flash
Burns eyebrows and moustache;
When people dine no kind of wine beats ipecacuanha,
But common sense suggests
You keep it for your guests -
Then naught annoys the organ boys like throwing red-hot coppers,
And much amusement bides
In common butter-slides.
And stringy snares across the stairs cause unexpected croppers.
Coal scuttles, recollect,
Produce the same effect.
A man possessed
Of common sense
Need not invest
At great expense -

William Schwenck Gilbert

The Precocious Baby. A Very True Tale

(To be sung to the Air of the "Whistling Oyster.")

An elderly person a prophet by trade
With his quips and tips
On withered old lips,
He married a young and a beautiful maid;
The cunning old blade!
Though rather decayed,
He married a beautiful, beautiful maid.

She was only eighteen, and as fair as could be,
With her tempting smiles
And maidenly wiles,
And he was a trifle past seventy-three:
Now what she could see
Is a puzzle to me,
In a prophet of seventy seventy-three!

Of all their acquaintances bidden (or bad)
With their loud high jinks
And underbred winks,
None thought they'd a family have but they had;
A dear little lad
Who drove 'em half mad,
For he turned out a horribly fast little cad.

For when he wa...

William Schwenck Gilbert

The Reverend Micah Sowls

The REVEREND MICAH SOWLS,
He shouts and yells and howls,
He screams, he mouths, he bumps,
He foams, he rants, he thumps.

His armour he has buckled on, to wage
The regulation war against the Stage;
And warns his congregation all to shun
"The Presence-Chamber of the Evil One,"

The subject's sad enough
To make him rant and puff,
And fortunately, too,
His Bishop's in a pew.

So REVEREND MICAH claps on extra steam,
His eyes are flashing with superior gleam,
He is as energetic as can be,
For there are fatter livings in that see.

The Bishop, when it's o'er,
Goes through the vestry door,
Where MICAH, very red,
Is mopping of his head.

"Pardon, my Lord, your SOWLS' excessive zeal,
It is a theme on which I strongly fe...

William Schwenck Gilbert

The Reverend Simon Magus.

A rich advowson, highly prized,
For private sale was advertised;
And many a parson made a bid;
The Reverend Simon Magus did.

He sought the agent's: "Agent, I
Have come prepared at once to buy
(If your demand is not too big)
The Cure of Otium-cum-Digge."

"Ah!" said the agent, "There's a berth -
The snuggest vicarage on earth;
No sort of duty (so I hear),
And fifteen hundred pounds a year!

"If on the price we should agree,
The living soon will vacant be;
The good incumbent's ninety five,
And cannot very long survive.

See here's his photograph you see,
He's in his dotage." "Ah, dear me!
Poor soul!" said Simon. "His decease
Would be a merciful release!"

The agent laughed the agent blinked -
The agent bl...

William Schwenck Gilbert

The Reward Of Merit.

Dr. Belville was regarded as the Crichton of his age:
His tragedies were reckoned much too thoughtful for the stage;
His poems held a noble rank, although it's very true
That, being very proper, they were read by very few.
He was a famous Painter, too, and shone upon the "line,"
And even Mr. Ruskin came and worshipped at his shrine;
But, alas, the school he followed was heroically high
The kind of Art men rave about, but very seldom buy
And everybody said
"How can he be repaid
This very great this very good this very gifted man?"
But nobody could hit upon a practicable plan!

He was a great Inventor, and discovered, all alone,
A plan for making everybody's fortune but his own;
For, in business, an Inventor's little better than a fool,
And my highly gifted frie...

William Schwenck Gilbert

The Rival Curates

List while the poet trolls
Of MR. CLAYTON HOOPER,
Who had a cure of souls
At Spiffton-extra-Sooper.

He lived on curds and whey,
And daily sang their praises,
And then he'd go and play
With buttercups and daisies.

Wild croquet HOOPER banned,
And all the sports of Mammon,
He warred with cribbage, and
He exorcised backgammon.

His helmet was a glance
That spoke of holy gladness;
A saintly smile his lance;
His shield a tear of sadness.

His Vicar smiled to see
This armour on him buckled:
With pardonable glee
He blessed himself and chuckled.

"In mildness to abound
My curate's sole design is;
In all the country round
There's none so mild as mine is!"

And HOOPER, disinclined
His trumpet to...

William Schwenck Gilbert

The Rover's Apology.

Oh, gentlemen, listen, I pray;
Though I own that my heart has been ranging,
Of nature the laws I obey,
For nature is constantly changing.
The moon in her phases is found,
The time and the wind and the weather,
The months in succession come round,
And you don't find two Mondays together.
Consider the moral, I pray,
Nor bring a young fellow to sorrow,
Who loves this young lady to-day,
And loves that young lady to-morrow.

You cannot eat breakfast all day,
Nor is it the act of a sinner,
When breakfast is taken away
To turn your attention to dinner;
And it's not in the range of belief,
That you could hold him as a glutton,
Who, when he is tired of beef,
Determines to tackle the mutton.
But this I am ready to say,
If it will diminish t...

William Schwenck Gilbert

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