BLESSED jokes of my dreams! Your praises I'd sing.
No mirth can compare to the mirth that you bring.
I've read London Punch from beginning to end,
On all comic papers much money I spend,
But naught that is in them can ever seem bright
Beside the rich jokes that I dream of at night.
How I laugh at those jests of my brain when at rest,
The gladdest and merriest, sweetest and best!
And how, when I wake in the morning and try
To call them to mind, oh how bashful, how shy
They seem, how they scatter and hide out of sight—
Those jokes of my dreamings, those jests of the night!
Take the one that came to me to-day just at dawn:
The Cable-Car turns and remarks to the Prawn,
"The Crowbar is seasick; but then what of that,
As long as the Camel won't wear a silk hat?"
I laughed—why, I laughed till my wife had a fright
For fear I'd go wild from that joke of the night.
And they're all much like that one—elusive enough,
Yet full of facetious, hilarious stuff—
Stuff past comprehension, stuff no man dares tell;
For nocturnal jests, e'en told ever so well—
'Tis odd it should be so—are not often bright,
Except to the dreamer who dreams them at night.