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Henry Kendall - The Song of Ninian Melville
Work rating: Low

Sing the song of noisy Ninny - hang the Muses - spit it out!
(Tuneful Nine ye needn`t help me - poet knows his way about!)
Sling me here a penny whistle - look alive, and let me slip
Into Ninny like a father - Ninny with the nimble lip.
Mister Melville, straight descendant from Professor Huxley`s ape,
Started life a mute for daddy - pulling face, sporting crape;
But, alas, he didn`t like it - lots of work and little pay.
Nature whispered, `you`re a windbag - play your cards another way.`

Mister Melville picked the hint up - pitched the coffin `biz` to pot;
Paid his bills, or didn`t pay them - doesn`t matter now a jot!
Twigging how the bread was buttered, he commenced a `waiting game`:
Pulled the strings upon the quiet - no one `tumbled` to his aim.
Paine, he purchased, Strauss, he borrowed - read a page or two of each;
Posed before his father`s porkers - made to them his maiden speech.
Then he spluttered, `Ninny has it!  Nin will keep himself in clothes,
Like the gutter Tully, Bradlaugh, leading noodles by the nose!`

In the fly-blown village pothouse, where a dribbling bag of beer, 
Passes for a human being, Nin commenced his new career -
Talked about the `Christian swindle` - cut the Bible into bits -
Shook his fist at Mark and Matthew - gave the twelve Apostles fits:
Slipped into the priests and parsons - hanunered at the British Court - -
Boozy boobies were astonished: lubbers of the Lambton sort!
Yards of ear were cocked to listen - yards of mouth began to shout
`Here`s a cove as is long-headed - Ninny knows his way about.`

Mister MelviRe was delighted - game in hand was paying well:
Fools and coin don`t hang together - Nin became a howling swell!
Took to `stumping` on the Racecourse - cut the old debating club:
Wouldn`t do for mighty Ninny now to mount a local tub!
Thornton`s Column was his platform: here our orator began
Hitting at the yellow heathen - cracking up the `working man` -
Spitting out at Immigration: roaring, like a worried bull,
At the lucre made from tallow - at the profit raised on wool.

Said our Ninny to our Ninny, `I have not the slightest doubt
Soaping down the "`orny `anded" is the safest "bizness" out!
Little work for spanking wages - this is just the thing they like,
So I`ll prop the eight hour swindle - be the boss in every strike.
In the end, I`ll pull a pot off ~ what I`m at is bound to take:
Ninny sees a bit before him - Ninny`s eyes are wide awake!
When the boobies make me member, Parkes, of course, will offer tip -
I will take the first fat billet - then my frouzy friends may rip.`

So it came to pass that Melville, Mister Melville, I should say -
Dodged about with deputations, half a dozen times a day!
Started strikes and bossed the strikers - damned employers, every one,
On the Column - off the Column - in the shanty - in the sun!
`Down with masters - up with wages! keep the "pigtail" out of this!`
This is what our Ninny shouted - game, you see, of hit or miss!
World, of course, is full of noodles - some who bray at Wallsend sent
Thing we know to be a windbag bouncing into Parliament!

Common story, this of Ninny! many fellows of his breed
Prowl about to bone the guinea, up to dirty tricks indeed;
Haven`t now the time to tan them: but, by Jove, I`d like to tan
Back of that immense imposter that they call the `working man`!
Drag upon our just employees - sponger on a worn-out wife
Boozing in alley pothouse every evening of his life.
Type he is of Nin`s supporters: tot him up and tot him down,
He would back old Nick to-morrow for the sake of half a crown!

House with high, august traditions - Chamber where the voice of Lowe,
And the lordly words of Wentworth sounded thirty years ago -
Hall familiar to our fathers, where, in days exalted, rang
All the tones of all the feeling which ennobled Bland and Lang -
We in ashes - we in sack cloth, sorrow for the insult cast
By a crowd of bitter boobies on the grandeur of the past!
Take again your penny whistle - boy, it is no good to me:
Last invention is a bladder with the title of M.P.!
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