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.