Reginald's Rubaiyat

by H.H. Munro (SAKI)

　　

---

The other day (confided Reginald), when I was killing time inthe bathroom and making bad resolutions for the New Year, itoccurred to me that I would like to be a poet. The chiefqualification, I understand, is that you must be born. Well,I hunted up my birth certificate, and found that I was allright on that score, and then I got to work on a Hymn to theNew Year, which struck me as having possibilities. Itsuggested extremely unusual things to absolutely unlikelypeople, which I believe is the art of first-class catering inany department. Quite the best verse in it went somethinglike this -"Have you heard the groan of a gravelled grouse,Or the snarl of a snaffled snail(Husband or mother, like me, or spouse),Have you lain a-creep in the darkened houseWhere the wounded wombats wail?"It was quite improbable that anyone had, you know, and that'swhere it stimulated the imagination and took people out oftheir narrow, humdrum selves. No one has ever called menarrow or humdrum, but even I felt worked up now and then atthe thought of that house with the stricken wombats in it.It simply wasn't nice. But the editors were unanimous inleaving it alone; they said the thing had been done beforeand done worse, and that the market for that sort of work wasextremely limited.It was just on the top of that discouragement that theDuchess wanted me to write something in her album--somethingPersian, you know, and just a little bit decadent--and Ithought a quatrain on an unwholesome egg would meet therequirements of the case. So I started in with -"Cackle, cackle, little hen,How I wonder if and whenOnce you laid the egg that IMet, alas! too late. Amen."The Duchess objected to the Amen, which I thought gave an airof forgiveness and chose jugee to the whole thing; also shesaid it wasn't Persian enough, as though I were trying tosell her a kitten whose mother had married for love ratherthan pedigree. So I recast it entirely, and the new versionread -"The hen that laid thee moons ago, who knowsIn what Dead Yesterday her shades repose;To some election turn thy waning spanAnd rain thy rottenness on fiscal foes."I thought there was enough suggestion of decay in that tosatisfy a jackal, and to me there was something infinitelypathetic and appealing in the idea of the egg having a sortof St. Luke's summer of commercial usefulness. But theDuchess begged me to leave out any political allusions; she'sthe president of a Women's Something or other, and she saidit might be taken as an endorsement of deplorable, methods.I never can remember which Party Irene discourages with hersupport, but I shan't forget an occasion when I was stayingat her place and she gave me a pamphlet to leave at the houseof a doubtful voter, and some grapes and things for a womanwho was suffering from a chill on the top of a patentmedicine. I thought it much cleverer to give the grapes tothe former and the political literature to the sick woman,and the Duchess was quite absurdly annoyed about itafterwards. It seems the leaflet was addressed "To thoseabout to wobble"--I wasn't responsible for the silly title ofthe thing--and the woman never recovered; anyway, the voterwas completely won over by the grapes and jellies, and Ithink that should have balanced matters. The Duchess calledit bribery, and said it might have compromised the candidateshe was supporting; he was expected to subscribe to churchfunds and chapel funds, and football and cricket clubs andregattas, and bazaars and beanfeasts and bellringers, andpoultry shows and ploughing matches, and reading-rooms andchoir outings, and shooting trophies and testimonials, andanything of that sort; but bribery would not have beentolerated.I fancy I have perhaps more talent for electioneering thanfor poetry, and I was really getting extended over thisquatrain business. The egg began to be unmanageable, and theDuchess suggested something with a French literary ring aboutit. I hunted back in my mind for the most familiar Frenchclassic that I could take liberties with, and after a littleexercise of memory I turned out the following:-"Hast thou the pen that once the gardener had?I have it not; and know, these pears are had.Oh, larger than the horses of the PrinceAre those the general drives in Kaikobad."Even that didn't altogether satisfy Irene; I fancy thegeography of it puzzled her. She probably thought Kaikobadwas an unfashionable German spa, where you'd meet matrimonialbargain-hunters and emergency Servian kings. My temper wasbeginning to slip its moorings by that time I look rathernice when I lose my temper. (I hoped you would say I lose itvery often. I mustn't monopolise the conversation.)"Of course, if you want something really Persian andpassionate, with red wine and bulbuls in it," I went on tosuggest; but she grabbed the book away from me."Not for worlds. Nothing with red wine or passion in it.Dear Agatha gave me the album, and she would be mortified tothe quick" -I said I didn't believe Agatha had a quick, and we got quiteheated in arguing the matter. Finally, the Duchess declaredI shouldn't write anything nasty in her book, and I said Iwouldn't write anything in her nasty book, so there wasn't avery wide point of difference between us. For the rest ofthe afternoon I pretended to be sulking, but I was reallyworking back to that quatrain, like a fox-terrier that'sburied a deferred lunch in a private flower-bed. When I gotan opportunity I hunted up Agatha's autograph, which had thefront page all to itself, and, copying her prim handwritingas well as I could, I inserted above it the followingThibetan fragment:-"With Thee, oh, my Beloved, to do a dak(a dak I believe is a sort of uncomfortable post-journey)On the pack-saddle of a grunting yak,With never room for chilling chaperone,'Twere better than a Panhard in the Park."That Agatha would get on to a yak in company with a lovereven in the comparative seclusion of Thibet is unthinkable.I very much doubt if she'd do it with her own husband in theprivacy of the Simplon tunnel. But poetry, as I've remarkedbefore, should always stimulate the imagination.By the way, when you asked me the other day to dine with youon the 14th, I said I was dining with the Duchess. Well, I'mnot. I'm dining with you.

---

---