Oh my Sainted Pants!....Oh my Painted Ants! :) I think the following poem, rendered by the formidable Miss.Tibbs in honour of the President deserves special mention. Dahl's comic timing and astuteness were best seen in his whacky poems. So here goes:
The Nurse's Song
This mighty man of whom I sing,
The greatest of them all,
Was once a teeny little thing,
Just eighteen inches tall.
I knew him as a tiny tot,
I nursed him on my knee.
I used to sit him on the pot
And wait for him to wee.
I always washed between his toes,
And cut his little nails.
I brushed his hair and wiped his nose
And weighed him on the scales.
Through happy childhood days he strayed,
As all nice children should.
I smacked him when he disobeyed,
And stopped when he was good.
It soon began to dawn on me
He wasn't very bright,
Because when he was twenty-three
He couldn't read or write.
"What shall we do?" his parents sob.
"The boy has got the vapours!
He couldn't even get a job
Delivering the papers!"
"Ah-ha," I said, "this little clot
Could be a politician."
"Nanny," he cried, "Oh Nanny, what
A super proposition!"
"Okay," I said, "let's learn and note
The art of politics.
Let's teach you how to miss the boat
And how to drop some bricks,
And how to win the people's vote
And lots of other tricks.
Let's learn to make a speech a day
Upon the T.V. screen,
In which you never never say
Exactly what you mean.
And most important,
by the way,
In not to let your teeth decay,
And keep your fingers clean.
And now that I am eighty-nine,
It's too late to repent.
The fault was mine the little swine
Became the President.
