He has a name which can-t be brought
Within the sphere of metre;
But, as he-s Peter by report,
I-ll trot him out as Peter.
I call him mine; but don-t suppose
That I-m his dad, O reader!
My wife has got a Norman nose-
She reads the tales of Ouida.
I never loved a nigger belle-
My tastes are too aesthetic!
The perfume from a gin is-well,
A rather strong emetic.
But, seeing that my theme is Pete,
This verse will be the neater
If I keep on the proper beat,
And stick throughout to Peter.
We picked him up the Lord knows where!
At noon we came across him
Asleep beside a hunk of bear-
His paunch was bulged with -possum.
(Last stanza will not bear, I own,
A pressure analytic;
But bard whose weight is fourteen stone,
Is apt to thump the critic.)
We asked the kid to give his name:
He didn-t seem too willing-
The darkey played the darkey-s game-
We tipped him with a shilling!
We tipped him with a shining bob-
No Tommy Dodd, believe us.
We didn-t -tumbleâ? to his job-
Ah, why did Pete deceive us!
I, being, as I-ve said, a bard,
Resolved at once to foster
This mite whose length was just a yard-
This portable impostor!
-This babeâ?-I spoke in Wordsworth-s tone-
(See Wordsworth-s -Lucyâ?, neighbour)
-I-ll make a darling of my own;
And he-ll repay my labour.
-He-ll grow as gentle as a fawn-
As quiet as the blossoms
That beautify a land of lawn-
He-ll eat no more opossums.
-The child I to myself will take
In a paternal manner;
And ah! he will not swallow snake
In future, or -goanna-.
-Will you reside with me, my dear?â?
I asked in accents mellow-
The nigger grinned from ear to ear,
And said, -All right, old fellow!â?
And so my Pete was taken home-
My pretty piccaninny!
And, not to speak of soap or comb,
His cleansing cost a guinea.
-But hang expenses!â? I exclaimed,
-I-ll give him education:
A -nig- is better when he-s tamed,
Perhaps, than a Caucasian.
-Ethnologists are in the wrong
About our sable brothers;
And I intend to stop the song
Of Pickering and others.â?
Alas, I didn-t do it though!
Old Pickering-s conclusions
Were to the point, as issues show,
And mine were mere delusions.
My inky pet was clothed and fed
For months exceeding forty;
But to the end, it must be said,
His ways were very naughty.
When told about the Land of Morn
Above this world of Mammon,
He-d shout, with an emphatic scorn,
-Ah, gammon, gammon, gammon!â?
He never lingered, like the bard,
To sniff at rose expanding.
-Me like,â? he said, -em cattle-yard-
Fine smell-de smell of branding!â?
The soul of man, I tried to show,
Went up beyond our vision.
-You ebber see dat fellow go?â?
He asked in sheer derision.
In short, it soon occurred to me
This kid of six or seven,
Who wouldn-t learn his A B C,
Was hardly ripe for heaven.
He never lost his appetite-
He bigger grew, and bigger;
And proved, with every inch of height,
A nigger is a nigger.
And, looking from this moment back,
I have a strong persuasion
That, after all, a finished black
Is not the -cleanâ?-Caucasian.
Dear Peter from my threshold went,
One morning in the body:
He -droppedâ? me, to oblige a gent-
A gent with spear and waddy!
He shelved me for a boomerang-
We never had a quarrel;
And, if a moral here doth hang,
Why let it hang-the moral!
My mournful tale its course has run-
My Pete, when last I spied him,
Was eating -possum underdone:
He had his gin beside him.
Peter The Piccaninny
Henry Kendall
(1)
Poem topics: believe, child, education, future, heaven, home, lost, rose, snake, song, wife, world, soul, gentle, moment, clean, wrong, morning, sphere, intend, Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
Submit Spanish Translation
Submit German Translation
Submit French Translation
Write your comment about Peter The Piccaninny poem by Henry Kendall
Best Poems of Henry Kendall