“Now, you see,” said my friend, as we breasted a bar,
And he mentioned to Popsy, “A go of Three Star”—
“Now, you see, I am built on a different plan,
And avoid all extremes, like a moderate man—
But you! you can never touch liquor at all
Without kicking prudence right over the wall.
“You’ve a bad moral balance, a weakness somewhere,
A mental deficiency under your hair,
And large woolly rats get right into your ‘think’
The moment you open your gills for a drink—
Why not be like me? Have a will of your own,
And the firmness to take it or leave it alone.”
So we filled them again, and again, and some more,
While he started to probe the thing into the core;
Oh, he analysed drunkenness, torso and limb,
Till his phrases grew thick and his vision grew dim,
And he fully, but mildly, condemned as “a muff”
Any chap who said “Yes,” when he’d lowered enough.
“W’y the dickens,” he groaned and deplored, “cansh yer be
A (hic) moderate, senshible drinker, like me?
For”—he said as he sank to the floor with a groan—
“I’m a mansh (hic) can take it, or leave it alone.”