Stop, William, stop! Your game is not a game we can enjoy!

Your father's son should not thus play the Little Vulgar Boy!

This is not Margate, William mine, and ours is not a crew

Of ordinary trippers, packed aboard the Lively Loo

For a shillingsworth of suffering on a wild and wobbling sea.

Stop, William! You'll upset the boat! Why can't you let it be?

Our boat has braved a many storms. It's old and may be crank;

But though it sometimes sprang a leak, it never wholly sank.

We are not packed so close to-day as we have oft been packed.

Against some stiffer gales than this we've weathered and we've tacked;

But, William, though our craft tossed wild, though loud the winds have roared,

We've never, never had so bad a boy as you on board!

Sit down, now do, you pickle, you! Don't dance upon that thwart,

And see-saw in that sort of way. We want to get to port,

Not Davy Jones's Locker, Sir. "These roarers" are wild things,

As Shakspeare in The Tempest says, and do not care for Kings;

To keep them down and bale them out has always been our aim;

But you, you just play larks with them. What is your little game?

You, young, the latest chap on board, but of a sound old stock

Of Royal navigators, do you think it right to mock

All nautical traditions in this reckless kind of way,

And greet these waves, as Byron did, as though with them you'd play?

They're dangerous playfellows, boy; tiger-cubs hardly in it

For riskiness! I say, do stop! You'll swamp us in a minute.

Look at your Crown! Such head-gear, boy, is seldom a tight fit,

And oscillations sometimes act as Notices to Quit!

What would your grandfather have said to see you sway and prance?

Sit still, lad, you alarm us all. Just look at Madame France!

She's thought a fairish sailor, and has doffed her Crown, but see,

She's clutching at the gunwale, too, as nervous as can be.

Whilst, as for dear SeÑora Spain and her poor little charge,

I guess she wishes this same tub were Cleopatra's barge,

Or something broad and beamy that won't easily capsize.

Austria's staring with a look of agonized surprise.

And Italy's dumfoundered. Sit down, boy! you're tempting fate.

These days are trying ones, for us, 'tis worse than Forty-Eight.

Then there were winds and whirlpools, but no Socialistic Sea

Sweeping all shores, and threatening International anarchy.

And with its waves you're wantoning, and wobbling up and down,

Indifferent to our stomachs,—as regardless of your Crown.

Upon my honour it's too bad. Noblesse oblige, you know,

'Tis not a Hohenzollern we'd expect to serve us so.

You've sacked our safest Pilot, who objected to your pranks,

And now you are coquetting with mad mutiny in the ranks,

Eh? You'll suppress it when you please, you'll smash up all your foes?

'Tis a new game, for Royalty, and risky, goodness knows.

Meanwhile, don't sway the boat like that, into the sea you'll fall;

Or, what's more likely, just capsize the craft and drown us all!