Chips! It may be well disputed
If a word exists, less suited,
Or more odd and uninviting
As a theme for rhyme or writing;
Coinage of that dull Max MÜller,
Title of a book still duller.
Fill’d with words so cabalistic,
That methought the German mystic
Must have found the dialect
Spoken ere man walk’d erect.

Never mind! what must be, must;
Men must eat both crumb and crust.
And the dodge of many a poet
(Half the verses publish’d show it),
When his Pegasus rides restive,
Is to make his rhymes suggestive.
If in what you chance to seize on
Rhyme and reason will not chime,
Better rhyme without the reason
Than the reason and no rhyme;
Better anything than prose,
So, as Milton says, “here goes.”

“When the Grecian chiefs in ships
Sail’d on Argonautic trips!”

“When the Furies with their whips
Flogg’d Orestes all to strips!

“When the sun in dim eclipse
In the darken’d ocean dips!”

Still I see no clue to chips!

“Meadows where the lambkin skips,
Where the dew from roses drips
And the bee the honey sips . . . .”

Odd, that nothing leads to chips!

Then I thought of “cranks and quips,”
Wanton wiles and laughing lips,
Luring us to fatal slips,
And leaving us in Satan’s grips.

Then I made a desperate trial,
With the sixth and seventh vial—
Thinking I could steal some Chips
From St. John’s Apocalypse.

Then there came a long hiatus,
While I kept repeating Chips,
Feeling the divine afflatus
Oozing through my finger-tips.

Gone and going hopelessly,
So, in my accustom’d manner,
Underneath my favourite tree,
I began a mild havannah—
’Twas indeed my favourite station,
For recruiting mind and body;
Drinking draughts of inspiration,
Alternate with whisky toddy.
’Twas an oak tree old and hoary.
And my garden’s pride and glory;
Hallow’d trunk and boughs in splinters,
Mossy with a thousand winters.

Here I found the Muses’ fountain,
And perceived my spirits mounting,
And exclaim’d in accents burning,
To the tree my eyes upturning,
“Venerable tree and vast,
Speak to me of ages past!
Sylvan monarch of the wold,
Tell me of the days of old!
Did thy giant boughs o’er-arching
View the Roman legions marching?
Has the painted Briton stray’d
Underneath thy hoary shade?
Did some heathen oracle
In thy knotty bosom dwell,
As in groves of old Dodona,
Or the Druid oaks of Mona?
Dwelt the outlaw’d foresters
Here in ‘otium cum dig.’
While the feather’d choristers
In thy branches ‘hopp’d the twig?’
Help me, Nymph! Fawn! Hamadryad!
One at once, or all the Triad.”

Lo! a voice to my invoking!
’Twas my stupid gardener croaking,
“Please, Sir, mayn’t I fall this tree,
’Cos it spoils the crops, you see:
And the grass it shades and lumbers,
And we shan’t have no cowcumbers.
Some time it will fall for good,
And the Missis wants the wood.”

Shock’d at such a scheme audacious,
Faint, I gasp’d out, “Goodness gracious!”
“Yes,” I said, “the tree must fall,
’Tis, alas! the lot of all;
But no mortal shall presume
To accelerate its doom.
Rescued from thy low desires,
It shall warm my poet fires.
Let the strokes of fate subdue it,
Let the axe of Time cut through it;
When it must fall, let it fall,
But, oh! never let me view it.”

Seeing that my phrase exalted
Fell upon his senses vainly,
In my full career I halted,
And I spoke my orders plainly.
“Never seek to trim or lop it,
Once for all I charge thee, drop it.”
And I added, to my sorrow,
“You shall ‘cut your stick’ to-morrow
Know what that means, I suppose?”
“Yes,” he said, “I thinks I does.”
So I left him at this crisis,
Left him to his own devices,
Left him like the royal Vandal,
Leaning on his old spade handle.
Oh! those vulgar slang expressions,—
How I smart for my transgressions!
Judge my wrath, surprise, and horror,
When I rose upon the morrow,
To behold my tree in ruin,
And be told ’twas all my doing,
While the villain grinn’d in glee!
“Wretch!” I thunder’d, “Where’s my tree?”
And these words came from his lips,
“There’s the tree, and them’s the Chips.”