Edith Sitwell - Hornpipe lyrics

Sailor come To the drum Out of Babylon; Hobby-horses Foam, the dumb Sky rhinoceros glum Watched the courses of the breakers' rocking-horses and with Glaucis Lady Venus on the settee of the horsehair sea! Where Lord Tennyson in laurels wore a gloria free In a borealic iceberg came Victoria; she Knew Prince Albert's tall memorial took the colors of the floreal And the borealic iceberg; floating on they see New-arisen Madam Venus for whose sake from far Came the fat and zebra'd emperor from Zanzibar Where like golden bouquets lay far Asia, Africa, Cathay All laid before that shady lady by the fibroid Shah Captain Fraca**e stout as any water-bu*t came, stood With Sir Bacchus both a-drinking the black tarr'd grapes' blood Plucked among the tartan leaf*ge By the furry wind whose grief age Could not wither — like a squirrel with a gold star-nut Queen Victoria sitting shocked upon the rocking horse Of a wave said to the Laureate, "This minx of course Is as sharp as any lynx and blacker-deeper than the drinks and quite as Hot as any Hottentot, without remorse! For the minx" Said she "And the drinks You can see Are hot as any Hottentot and not the goods for me!"