Baboo Hurry Bungsho Jabberjee, B.A. — Chapter 3

Hail! you full-blown tulip!Oh! when the wheezing zephyr brought glad newsOf your judicious appointment, no hearts who did peruse.Such a long-desiderated slice of good luck were sorry at,To a most prolific and polacious Poet-Laureate!For no poeta nascitur who is fitterTo greet Royal progeny with melodious twitter.Seated on the resplendent cloud of official Elysium,Far away, far away from fuliginous busy hum

You are now perched with phenomenal velocityOn vertiginous pinnacle of poetic pomposity!Yet deign to cock thy indulgent eye at the petitionOf one consumed by corresponding ambition,And lend the helping hand to lift, pulley-hauley,To Parnassian Peak this poor perspiring Bengali!Whose ars poetica (as per sample lyric)Is fully competent to turn out panegyric.What if some time to come, perhaps not distant,You were in urgent need of Deputy-Assistant!For two Princesses might be confined simultaneously—Then, how to homage the pair extemporneously?Or with Nuptial Ode, lack-a-daisy! What a fixIf with Influenza raging like cat on hot bricks!In such a wrong box you will please remember yours truly,Who can do the needful satisfactorily and duly,By an epithalamium (or what not) to inflame your creditWith every coronated head that will have read it!

And the quid pro quo, magnificent and grand Sir!Would be at the rate of four annas for every stanza,Now, thou who scale sidereal paths afar dost.Deign from thy brilliant boots to cast the superfluous star-dustUponThe head of himWhose fate dependsOn Thee!