Mother Goose for Grownups/The Opportune Overthrow of Humpty Dumpty
Upon a wall of medium height Bombastically satA boastful boy, and he was quite Unreasonably fat:And what aroused a most intense Disgust in passers-byWas his abnormal impudence In hailing them with “Hi!”While by his kicks he loosened bricks The girls to terrify.
When thus for half an hour or more He’d played his idle tricks,And wounded something like a score Of people with the bricks,A man who kept a fuel shop Across from where he satRemarked: “Well, this has got to stop.” Then, snatching up his hat,And sallying out, began to shout: “Look here! Come down from that!”
The boastful boy to laugh began, As laughs a vapid clown,And cried: “It takes a bigger man Than you to call me down!This wall is smooth, this wall is high, And safe from every one.No acrobat could do what I Had been and gone and done!”Though this reviled, the other smiled, And said: “Just wait, my son!”
Then to the interested throng That watched across the wayHe showed with smiling face a long And slender Henry Clay,Remarking: “In upon my shelves All kinds of coal there are.Step in, my friends, and help yourselves. And he who first can jarThat wretched urchin off his perch Will get this good cigar.”
The throng this task did not disdain, But threw with heart and soul,Till round the youth there raged a rain Of lumps of cannel-coal.He dodged for all that he was worth, Till one bombarder deftTriumphant brought him down to earth, Of vanity bereft.“I see,” said he, “that this is the Coal day when I get left.”
The moral is that fuel can Become the tool of fateWhen thrown upon a little man, Instead of on a grate.This story proves that when a brat Imagines he’s admired,And acts in such a fashion that He makes his neighbors tired,That little fool, who’s much too cool; Gets warmed when coal is fired.