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Title: "Bart's" Club
Author: Harry Graham [
More Titles by Graham]
("In my view, the most absolutely perfect club of all would be a club where absolutely every man could get in, it mattered not what he had done in the past."--Bart Kennedy.)
It fills, indeed, a long felt need,
This institution, just arisen;
We notice here that atmosphere
Of restaurant and prison,
Of green-room, gambling-hell, saloon,
Which makes it an especial boon.
That member there with close-cropped hair,
Who noisily inhales his luncheon,
His flattened nose has felt the blows
Of many a p'liceman's truncheon;
The premier cracksman of the City,
Is Chairman of our House Committee!
That bull-necked youth, with fractured tooth,
Discussing Plato with his neighbour,
Returned to-day from Holloway,
And eighteen months' "hard labour";
He's such a gentleman, I think,
--Or would be, if he didn't drink.
We've thieves and crooks upon our books,
And all the nimble-fingered gentry;
The buccaneer is harboured here,
The "shark" has instant entry.
Blackmail is practised, too, by all,
Who never heard of a black-ball!
We gladly take the titled rake,
The bankrupt and the unfrocked parson,
All those whose vice is loading dice,
Or bigamy, or arson.
Most of our pilgrims have pursued
The path of penal servitude.
We've anarchists upon our lists,
While regicides infest the smoke-room;
(The faux-bonhomme who brings a bomb
Must leave it in the cloak-room).
Ink for the forger we provide,
And strychnine for the suicide.
Each member's name is known to fame,
As "green-goods man" or quack-physician;
We welcome here the pseudo-peer,
Or bogus politician.
Within the shelter of our fold
King Peter greets King Leopold.
Our doors are barred to Scotland Yard;
And no precautions are neglected.
Come, then, with me, and you shall be
Immediately elected,
To what with confidence I dub
An "absolutely perfect" club!
[The end]
Harry Graham's poem: "Bart's" Club
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