Poets, painters, and puddings; these three

Make up the World as it ought to be.

Poets make faces

And sudden grimaces:

They twit you, and spit you

On words: then admit you

To heaven or hell

By the tales that they tell.

Painters are gay

As young rabbits in May:

They buy jolly mugs,

Bowls, pictures, and jugs:

The things round their necks

Are lively with checks,

(For they like something red

As a frame for the head):

Or they’ll curse you with oaths,

That tear holes in your clothes.

(With nothing to mend them

You’d best not offend them).

Puddings should be

Full of currants, for me:

Boiled in a pail,

Tied in the tail

Of an old bleached shirt:

So hot that they hurt,

So huge that they last

From the dim, distant past

Until the crack o’ doom

Lift the roof off the room.

Poets, painters, and puddings; these three

Crown the day as it crowned should be.