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Title: The Policeman
Author: Harry Graham [
More Titles by Graham]
My hero may be daily seen
In ev'ry crowded London street;
Longsuff'ring, stoical, serene,
With huge pontoonlike feet,
His boots so stout, so squat, so square,
A motor-car might shelter there.
The traffic's cataract he dams,
With hands that half obscure the sun,
Like monstrous, vast Virginian hams.
A trifle underdone;
The while the matron and the maid
Pass safely by beneath their shade.
His courtesy is quite unique,
His tact and patience have no end;
He helps the helpless and the weak,
He is the children's friend;
And nobody can feel alarm
Who clings to his paternal arm.
When foreign tourists go astray
In any tangled thoroughfare,
Or spinster ladies lose their way,--
The constable is there.
With smile avuncular and bland,
He leads them gently by the hand.
He stalks on duty through the night,
A bull's-eye lantern at his belt;
His muffled steps are noiseless quite,
His soles unheard--tho' felt!
And burglars, when a crib they crack,
Are forced to do so from the back.
In far New York the "man in blue"
Is Irish by direct descent.
His bludgeon is intended to
Inflict a nasty dent;
And if you ask him for advice,
He knocks you senseless in a trice.
In Paris he is fierce and small,
But tho' he twirls his waxed moustache,
The natives heed him not at all.
No more does the apache.
And cabmen, when he lifts his palm,
Drive over him without a qualm.
The German minion of the law
Is stern, inflexible, austere.
His presence fills his friends with awe,
The foreigner with fear.
Your doom is sealed if he should pass
And find you walking on the grass!
But no policeman can compare
With London's own partic'lar pet;
A martyr he who stands foursquare
To ev'ry Suffragette,
And when that lady kicks his shins
Or bites his ankles, merely grins.
He may not be as bright, forsooth,
As Dr. Watson's famous foil,--
Sherlock, that keen unerring sleuth
Immortalised by Doyle,
And Patti who, where'er she roams,
Asserts "There's no Police like Holmes!"
But though his movements, staid and slow,
Provide the vulgar with a jest,
How true the heart that beats below
That whistle at his breast!
How perfect an example he
Of what a constable should be!
[The end]
Harry Graham's poem: Policeman
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