The Complete Works of   JAMES JOYCE

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The Complete Works of   JAMES JOYCE Page 237

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,

 

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