JOKES OF THE NIGHT

BLESSED jokes of my dreams! Your praises I’ d sing.

No mirth can compare to the mirth that you bring.

I’ ve read London Punch from beginning to end,

On all comic papers much money I spend,

But naught that is in them can ever seem bright

Beside the rich jokes that I dream of at night.

How I laugh at those jests of my brain when at rest,

The gladdest and merriest, sweetest and best!

And how, when I wake in the morning and try

To call them to mind, oh how bashful, how shy

They seem, how they scatter and hide out of sight —

Those jokes of my dreamings, those jests of the night!

Take the one that came to me to-day just at dawn:

The Cable-Car turns and remarks to the Prawn,

“The Crowbar is seasick; but then what of that,

As long as the Camel won’ t wear a silk hat?”

I laughed — why, I laughed till my wife had a fright

For fear I’ d go wild from that joke of the night.

And they’ re all much like that one — elusive enough,

Yet full of facetious, hilarious stuff —

Stuff past comprehension, stuff no man dares tell;

For nocturnal jests, e’ en told ever so well —

’ Tis odd it should be so — are not often bright,

Except to the dreamer who dreams them at night.