UPON an average, twice a week, When anguish clouds my brow, My good physician friend I seek To know “what ails me now.”
He taps me on the back and chest, And scans my tongue for bile, And lays an ear against my breast And listens there awhile;
Then is he ready to admit That all he can observe Is something wrong inside, to wit: My pneumogastric nerve!
Now, when these Latin names within Dyspeptic hulks like mine Go wrong, a fellow should begin To draw what's called the line.
It seems, however, that this same, Which in my hulk abounds, Is not, despite its awful name, So fatal as it sounds;
Yet of all torments known to me, I'll say without reserve, There is no torment like to thee, Thou pneumogastric nerve!
This subtle, envious nerve appears To be a patient foe,— It waited nearly forty years Its chance to lay me low;
Then, like some blithering blast of hell, It struck this guileless bard, And in that evil hour I fell Prodigious far and hard.
Alas! what things I dearly love — Pies, puddings, and preserves — Are sure to rouse the vengeance of All pneumogastric nerves!
Oh that I could remodel man! I'd end these cruel pains By hitting on a different plan From that which now obtains.
The stomach, greatly amplified, Anon should occupy The all of that domain inside Where heart and lungs now lie.
But, first of all, I should depose That diabolic curve And author of my thousand woes, The pneumogastric nerve!
Cookies on Poetry Cove