The Songs of Simple Simon

THE SONGS OF SIMPLE SIMON.
II.—THE WALLOPING BANDOLIER.

ou may laugh if you will at this song of mine,
You may greet my tale with a sneer,
But you’ll never meet with so moving a lay
As the Tale of the Bandolier.

A handsome young Bandolier was he
(And they can be gorgeously gay),
And full of spirit, and blithe and free,
Was the Bandolier of my lay.

But, alas! that we cannot all perfect be!—
I pause to remove a tear—
He was—I grieve to say it—he was
A Walloping Bandolier!

Now a Bandolier who wallops, you know,
Is not a respectable person;
And a delicate subject he is, by the way,
For a poet to have to write verse on.

But with this particular Bandolier
It was not an original habit,
For to walloping, clearly, he ne’er had been prone
If it hadn’t been for the Rabbit!

For one dark, dark night, when no moon was seen,
When all was still on the sea,
The Bad Rabbit came to the Bandolier
And whispered, “Oh, come with me!

“Oh, come with me to the dark sea-shore,
Where the waves break soft on the sand,
And there you shall see a wonderful sight!”
And he seized the Bandolier’s hand.

Away they went to the lonely beach,
And they crouched down behind a rock,
And—I know not what sight the Bandolier saw,
But he never got over the shock!

Some say that they witnessed a Mermaids’ Dance,
Some say that they saw the Graboon;
Some say that they went in an ice-cream boat
To visit the Man in the Moon.

They may be right or they may be wrong,
The truth we never shall know;
For the Rabbit has never been heard of since,
He has gone where the Bad Rabbits go.

And the Bandolier sits weeping alone
On the top of a lonely rock,
And there he wallops the livelong day,
For he’s never got over the shock!

And as he wallops, he mutters low
Strange, incomprehensible words;
And now he swims as the fishes swim,
And now he flies like the birds.

You may laugh if you will at this tale of mine,
You may greet this song with a sneer,
But there surely can be no sadder sight
Than a Walloping Bandolier!

Simple Simon.

 

“Some say that they witnessed a Mermaids’ Dance, Some say that they saw the Graboon” (p. 104).