  CONVENTION is a thing I hate, Convention is a thing I scorn; And yet, alas! I grieve to state I was conventionally born. My father and my mother were (A curse be on Convention’s head!) Two sweethearts—youth and maiden—ere They were conventionally wed. Then came my vaccination, and, Convention though I cannot brook, I’m given now to understand It quite conventionally “took.” I cut my teeth—convention! Bah! A tear stood in my baby eye; Oh, why did I not learn from ma That teething babies always cry? I was an infant, then a child, And then a boy, and then a youth; Ah! even now it makes me wild— But I must tell the bitter truth. And then I came to man’s estate; You see that I no single jot Did from convention deviate, And yet I think convention “rot.” I fell in love! Ah, he who sits In judgment on the modern stage And tears the common play to bits Will understand my frenzied rage. I fell in love! Convention’s slave To dull convention bowed the knee; And in return the maiden gave Her love (conventional) to me. And now I have some girls and boys Who grow, and play, and go to school; Conventional are all my joys— I’m just like any other fool. I give off Ibsen to my wife, And quote the notes of W. A.; But still I lead a common life— Convention won’t be kept at bay. The end, of course, will come at last. Oh, may I, like Elijah, rise In something safe upon the blast, And living pass beyond the skies! I hope sincerely that I shall— I loathe the bare idea of death, It is so damn’d conventional. |
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