Lord Chancellor's Nightmare Song

Love unrequited, robs me of me rest
Love, hopeless love, my ardent soul encumbers
Love, nightmare like, lies heavy on me chest
And weaves itself into my midnight slumbers

When you're lying awake with a dismal headache
And repose is taboo'd by anxiety
I conceive you may use any language
You choose to indulge in, without impropriety

For your brain is on fire, the bed-clothes conspire
Of usual slumber to plunder you
First your counter pane goes and uncovers your toes
And your sheet slips demurely from under you

Then the blanketing tickles, you feel like mixed
Pickles, so terribly sharp is the pricking
And you're hot and you're cross and you tumble and
Toss 'til there's nothing 'twixt you and the ticking

Then the bed clothes all creep to the ground in a heap
And you pick 'em all up in a tangle
Next your pillow resigns and politely declines
To remain at its usual angle

Well, you get some repose in the form of a dose
With hot eye balls and head ever aching
But your slumbering teems with such horrible dreams
That you'd very much better be waking

For you dream you are crossing the Channel
And tossing about in a steamer from Harwich
Which is something between a large bathing machine
And a very small second class carriage

And you're giving a treat penny ice and cold meat
To a party of friends and relations
They're a ravenous horde and they all come on board
At Sloane Square and South Kensington Stations

And bound on that journey you find your attorney
Who started this morning from Devon
He's a bit undersiz'd and you don't feel surprised
When he tells you he's only eleven

Well you're driving like mad with this singular lad
By the bye the ship's now a four wheeler
And you're playing round games, and he calls you bad names
When you tell him that, ties pay the dealer

But this you can't stand so you throw up your hand
And you find you're as cold as an icicle
In your shirt and your socks the black silk with gold clocks
Crossing Sal'sbury Plain on a bicycle

And he and the crew are on bicycles too
Which they've somehow or other invested in
And he's telling the tars all the particulars
Of a company he's interested in

It's a scheme of devices, to get at low prices
All good from cough mixtures to cables
Which tickled the sailors, by treating retailers as
Though they were all vegetables

You get a good spades man to plant a small tradesman
First take off his boots with a boot tree
And his legs will take root, and his fingers will shoot
And they'll blossom and bud like a fruit tree

From the green grocer tree you get grapes
And green pea, cauliflower, pine apple and cranberries
While the pastry cook plant cherry brandy will grant
Apple puffs and three corners and banburys

The shares are a penny and ever so many
Are taken by Rothschild and Baring
And just as a few are allotted to you
You awake and with a shudder despairing

You're a regular wreck, with a crick in your neck
And no wonder you snore, for your head's on the floor
And you've needles and pins from your soles to your shins
And your flesh is acreep, for your left leg's asleep

And you've cramp in your toes and a fly on your nose
And some fluff in your lung and a feverish tongue
And a thirst that's intense
And a general sense that you haven't been sleeping in clover

But the darkness has pass'd, and it's daylight at last
And the night has been long, ditto, ditto my song
And thank goodness they're both of them over