by James Joyce
Mr. Dooley,
The wisest lad our country ever knew
‘Poor Europe ambles
Like sheep to shambles!’
Sighs Mr. Dooley-ooley-ooley-oo.
Who is the sunny sceptic who fights shy of Noah’s arks
When they are made in Germany by Engels and by Marx
But when the social deluge comes and rain begins to pour
Takes off his coat and trousers and prepares to swim ashore?
It’s Mr. Dooley,
Mr. Dooley,
The bravest boy our country ever knew
With arms akimbo
‘I’ll find that rainbow!’
Shouts Mr. Dooley-ooley-ooley-oo.
There’s an anthropoid consul called Bennett
There’s an anthropoid consul called Bennett,
With the jowl of a jackass or jennet,
He must muzzle or mask it
In the waste paper basket,
When he rises to bray in the Senate.
New Tipperary
Up to rheumy Zurich came an Irishman one day
As the town was rather dull he thought he’d give a play
So that German propagandists might be rightly riled
But the bully British philistine once more made Oscar wild.
For the C. G. is not literairy
And his handymen are rogues
Our C. G.’s about as literairy
As an Irish kish of brogues.
We paid all expenses,
As the good Swiss public knows,
But we’ll be damn well damned before we pay for
Private Carr’s swank hose.
When the play was over Carr with rage began to dance,
Howling ‘I wanta twenty quid for them there dandy pants:
Fork us out the tin or comrade Bennett here and me,
We’re going to wring your bloody necks. We’re out for liberty.’
Chorus (as above)
They found a Norse solicitor to prove that white was black,
That one can boss in Switzerland beneath the Union Jack,
They marched to the Gerichtshof but came down like Jack and Jill,
While the pants came tumbling after . . . and the judge is laughing still.
No, the C. G. is not literairy
And his handymen are rogues,
Our C. G.’s about as literairy
As an Irish kish of brogues.
Goodbye, brother Bennett!
Goodbye, chummy Carr!
If you put a beggar upon horseback,
Why, ‘e dunno where ‘e are!
To Budgeon, raughty tinker
Oh! Budgeon, boozer, bard, and canvas dauber
If to thine eyes these lines should sometime come
Bethink thee that the fleshpots of old Egypt
Nothing avail if beauty’s heart would beat.
Wherefore forswear butter besmeared Ravioli
Which do the mainsprings of thy talent clog
On Roggenbrot, in Joghurt, and cold water,
Paint and be damned. We wait. Begin, and end.
A bard once in lakelapt Sirmione
A bard once in lakelapt Sirmione
Lived in peace, eating locusts and honey
Till a son of a bitch
Left him dry on the beach
Without clothes, boots, time, quiet or money.
The Right Heart in the Wrong Place
Of spinach and gammon
Bull’s full to the crupper,
White lice and black famine
Are the mayor of Cork’s supper.
But the pride of old Ireland
Must be damnably humbled
If a Joyce is found cleaning
The boots of a Rumbold
S.O.S.
The Right Man in the Wrong Place
(Air: My heart’s in my highlands)
The pig’s in the barley,
The fat’s in the fire:
Old Europe can hardly
Find twopence to buy her.
Jack Spratt’s in his office,
Puffed, powdered and curled:
Rumbold’s in Warsaw -
All’s right with the world!
O, Mr Poe
O, Mr Poe,
You’re very slow!
St Monsieur Valette
Il nous faut la galette!
So haste to ease us
For the love of Jesus!
Kreutzbomben,
Sakrament!
Bis Dat Qui Cito Dat
Yanks who hae wi’ Wallace read,
Yanks whom Joyce has often bled,
Welcome to the hard plank bed,
And bolschevistic flea.
Who for Bloom and Inisfail
Longs to pine in Sing Sing jail,
Picking oakum without bail,
Let him publish me.
And I shall have no peace
And I shall have no peace there for Joyce comes more and more,
Dropping from a tramp or a taxi to where the white wine swills.
Then midnight’s all of a shimmy and Bloom a bloody bore
And morning full - of bills! bills! bills!
Who is Sylvia, what is she
Who is Sylvia, what is she
That all our scribes commend her?
Yankee, young and brave is she
The west this grace did lend her,
That all books might published be.
Is she rich as she is brave
For wealth oft daring misses?
Throngs about her rant and rave
To subscribe for Ulysses
But, having signed, they ponder grave.
Then to Sylvia let us sing
Her daring lies in selling.
She can sell each mortal thing
That’s boring, beyond telling.
To her let us buyers bring.
J-J-
after
W. S.
The press and the public misled me
The press and the public misled me
So brand it as slander and lies
That I am the bloke with the watches
And that you are the chap with the ties.
Jimmy Joyce, Jimmy Joyce, where have you been
Jimmy Joyce, Jimmy Joyce, where have you been
I’ve been to London to see the queen -
Jimmy Joyce, Jimmy Joyce, what saw you, tell?
I saw a brass bed in the Euston Hotel.
Fréderic’s Duck
(air: Dougherty’s Duck)
Cantus Plenus
Now Wallace he heard that Fréderic’s was the dearest place to dine
So he took the Joyces there to have combustible duck and wine.
The toothpicks cost a pound apiece, the salt a guinea a grain:
When Wallace saw the bill he felt an epigastric pain.
Chorus Coenatorum
Frédéric, Frédéric, Frédéric, O! My word, you pile it on!
A tour of the world is cheaper than a meal in the Tour d’Argent.
I’d rather eat hot dog in the street or dine for half a buck
Than sweat in full dress in your poultry-press and be bled like Fréderic’s duck.
I never thought a fountain pen
I never thought a fountain pen
Exemption gave as well as solace.
If critics blame my style again
I’ll say ’twas given me by Wallace.
Shem the Penman
Rosy Brook he bought a book
Rosy Brook he bought a book
Though he didn’t know how to spell it.
Such is the lure of literature
To the lad who can buy it and sell it.
I saw at Miss Beach’s when midday was shining
I saw at Miss Beach’s when midday was shining
A bard with fresh water drone drowsily on
I came when Miss Beach was distant and dining
The bard was asleep but the water was gone.
(with apologies to Thomas Moore)
Bran! Bran! the baker’s ban!
Bran! Bran! the baker’s ban!
Gobble it quick and die if you can.
Forgive us this day our deadly bread
But give us old Kellogg’s bran poultice instead.
P. J. T.
There’s a funny facepainter dubbed Tuohy
Whose bleaklook is rosybud bluey
For when he feels strong
He feels your daub’s all wrong
But when he feels weak he feels wooey.
Post Ulixem Scriptum
(Air: Molly Brannigan)
Man dear, did you never hear of buxom Molly Bloom at all,
As plump an Irish beauty, Sir, as any Levi-Blumenthal?
If she sat in the viceregal box Tim Healy’d have no room at all,
But curl up in a corner at a glance from her eye.
The tale of her ups and downs would aisy fill a handybook
That would cover the two worlds at once from Gibraltar
‘cross to Sandy Hook.
But now that tale is told, ochone, I’ve lost my daring dandy look:
Since Molly Bloom has left me here alone for to cry.
Man dear, I remember when my roving time was troubling me
We picknicked fine in storm or shine in France and Spain
and Hungary
And she said I’d be her first and last while the wine I poured
went bubbling free
Now every male you meet with has a finger in her pie.
Man dear, I remember with all the heart and brain of me
I arrayed her for the bridal but, O, she proved the bane of me.
With more puppies sniffing round her than the wooers of Penelope
She’s left me on her doorstep like a dog for to die.
My left eye is wake and his neighbour full of water, man.
I cannot see the lass I limned as Ireland’s gamest Daughter, man,
When I hear her lovers tumbling in their thousands for to
court her, man,
If I was sure I’d not be seen I’d sit down and cry.
May you live, may you love like this gaily spinning earth of ours,
And every morn a gallant sun awake you with new wealth of gold
But if I cling like a child to the clouds that are your petticoats
O Molly, handsome Molly, sure you won’t let me die!
The clinic was a patched one
The clinic was a patched one
Its outside old as rust
And every stick beneath that roof
Lay four foot thick in dust.
Is it dreadfully necessary
Is it dreadfully necessary
AND
(I mean that I pose etc) is it useful, I ask
this
Heat!?
We all know Mercury will
when
he Kan!
but as Dante saith:
1 Inferno is enough
Basta, he said, un’ inferno, perbacco!
And that bird -
Well!
He
oughter know!
(with apologies to Mr Ezra Pound)
Rouen is the rainiest place getting
Rouen is the rainiest place getting
Inside all impermeables, wetting
Damp marrow in drenched bones.
Midwinter soused us coming over Le Mans
Our inn at Niort was the Grape of Burgundy
But the winepress of the Lord thundered over that grape of
Burgundy
And we left it in a hurgundy.
(Hurry up, Joyce, it’s time!)
I heard mosquitoes swarm in old Bordeaux
So many!
I had not thought the earth contained so many
(Hurry up, Joyce, it’s time)
Mr Anthologos, the local gardener,
Greycapped, with politeness full of cunning
Has made wine these fifty years
And told me in his southern French
Le petit vin is the surest drink to buy
For if ’tis bad
Vous ne l’avez pas payé
(Hurry up, hurry up, now, now, now!)
But we shall have great times,
When we return to Clinic, that waste land
O Esculapios!
(Shan’t we? Shan’t we? Shan’t we?)
There’s a coughmixture scopolamine
There’s a coughmixture scopolamine
And its equal has never been seen
’Twould make staid Tutankamen
Laugh and leap like a salmon
And his mummy hop Skotch on the green.
Troppa Grazia, Sant’ Antonio!
E. P. is fond of an extra inch
Whenever the ‘ell it’s found.
But wasn’t J. J. the son of a binch
To send him an extra pound?
For he’s a jolly queer fellow
For he’s a jolly queer fellow
And I’m a jolly queer fellow
And Roth’s bad German for yellow
Which nobody can deny
Scheveningen, 1927
Say, ain’t this succéss fool author
Jést a dandy paradox,
With that sílvier béach behind him,
Howling: Hélp! I’m on the rocks!
à H. W.
Pour Ulysse IX
L. B. lugubriously still treads the press of pain
But J. J.’s joyicity is on the jig again
And he’ll highkick every abelboobied humballoon he cain
As he goes jubiling along.
Souvenir de la Chandeleur 1928
Paris
jokes
These capital letters represent the dancer
kicking the balloons of imposture into the
heaven of deception.
Crossing to the Coast
(Air: Killaloo)
Don’t talk of Congo Stanley
Or Livingstone the manly
Or the boys walked marching, parching
from Atlanta to the sea.
When I lift me left lad lazy,
Begor, I take it aisy.
Dijon - Lyon - par Avignon -
It’s long toulong for me!
J’y- J’y-
(suis le reste)
Hue’s Hue?
or Dalton’s Dilemma
What colour’s Jew Joyce when he’s rude and grim both,
Varied virid from groening and rufous with rage
And if this allrotter’s allred as a roth
Can he still blush unirish yet green as a gage?
Buried Alive
A translation of Gottfried Keller’s “Lebendig Begraben”
Now have I fed and eaten up the rose
Which then she laid within my stiffcold hand.
That I should ever feed upon a rose
I never had believed in liveman’s land.
Only I wonder was it white or red
The flower that in this dark my food has been.
Give us, and if Thou give, thy daily bread,
Deliver us from evil, Lord. Amen.
Father O’Ford
(Air: Father O’Flynn)
O Father O’Ford you’ve a masterful way with you.
Maid, wife and widow are wild to make hay with you
Blonde and brunette turn-about run away with you.
You’ve such a way with you, Father O’Ford.
That instant they see the sunshine from your eyes
Their hearts flitter flutter, they think and they sigh:
We kiss ground before thee, we madly adore thee
And crave and implore thee to take us, O Lord!
Buy a book in brown paper
Buy a book in brown paper
From Faber and Faber
To see Annie Liffey trip, tumble and caper.
Sevensinns in her singthings,
Plurabells on
her prose,
Seashell ebb music wayriver she flows.
To Mrs H. G. who complained that her visitors kept late hours
Go ca’canny with the cognac
And of the Wine fight shy,
Keep your eye upon the hourglass
That leaves the beaker dry.
Guestfriendliness to callers
Is your surest thief of time,
They’re so much at holmes when with you
They don’t dream of gugging heim.
Humptydump Dublin squeaks through his norse
Humptydump Dublin squeaks through his norse,
Humptydump Dublin hath a horriple vorse,
And, with all his kinks english
Plus his irishmanx brogues,
Humpydump Dublin’s grandada of rogues.
Stephen’s Green
(Please note: the first three stanzas are by James Stephens)
The wind stood up and gave a shout.
He whistled on his fingers and
Kicked the withered leaves about
And thumped the branches with his hand
And said he’d kill and kill and kill,