C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
The Bishop of Rum-ti-Foo
By William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)
F
Of bishops gathered to a man;
To Synod, called Pan-Anglican,
In flocking crowds they came.
Among them was a bishop who
Had lately been appointed to
The balmy isle of Rum-ti-Foo,
And Peter was his name.
They played the eloquent tum-tum,
And lived on scalps served up in rum—
The only sauce they knew.
When first good Bishop Peter came
(For Peter was that bishop’s name),
To humor them, he did the same
As they of Rum-ti-Foo.
(His name was Peter) loved him well,
And summoned by the sound of bell,
In crowds together came.
“Oh, massa, why you go away?
Oh, Massa Peter, please to stay.”
(They called him Peter, people say,
Because it was his name.)
And sailed away across the sea;
At London Bridge that bishop he
Arrived one Tuesday night;
And as that night he homeward strode
To his Pan-Anglican abode,
He passed along the Borough Road,
And saw a gruesome sight.
A person dancing on the ground,
Who straight began to leap and bound
With all his might and main.
To see that dancing man he stopped,
Who twirled and wriggled, skipped and hopped,
Then down incontinently dropped,
And then sprang up again.
“This style of dancing would delight
A simple Rum-ti-Foozleite:
I’ll learn it if I can,
To please the tribe when I get back.”
He begged the man to teach his knack.
“Right reverend sir, in half a crack!”
Replied that dancing man.
And taught the bishop every day;
The dancer skipped like any fay—
Good Peter did the same.
The bishop buckled to his task,
With battements and pas de basque.
(I’ll tell you, if you care to ask,
That Peter was his name.)
“Stick out your toes—stick in your head,
Stalk on with quick, galvanic tread—
Your fingers thus extend;
The attitude’s considered quaint.”
The weary bishop, feeling faint,
Replied, “I do not say it ain’t,
But ‘Time!’ my Christian friend!”
Dance as the Paynes and Lauris do,
Like this—one, two—one, two—one, two.”
The bishop, never proud,
But in an overwhelming heat
(His name was Peter, I repeat)
Performed the Payne and Lauri feat,
And puffed his thanks aloud.
“Just take your ankle in your hand,
And try, my lord, if you can stand—
Your body stiff and stark.
If when revisiting your see
You learnt to hop on shore, like me,
The novelty would striking be,
And must attract remark.”
That is a length to which, I trow,
Colonial bishops cannot go.
You may express surprise
At finding bishops deal in pride—
But if that trick I ever tried,
I should appear undignified
In Rum-ti-Foozle’s eyes.
Are well-conducted persons, who
Approve a joke as much as you,
And laugh at it as such;
But if they saw their bishop land,
His leg supported in his hand,
The joke they wouldn’t understand—
’Twould pain them very much!”