THE SINGULAR SANGFROID OF BABY BUNTING
by: Guy Wetmore Carryl
(1873-1904)
- ARTHOLOMEW Benjamin Bunting
- Had only three passions in life,
- And one of the trio was hunting,
- The others his babe and his wife.
- And always, so rigid his habits,
- He frolicked at home until two,
- And then started hunting for rabbits,
- And hunted till fall of the dew.
-
- Belinda Bellonia Bunting,
- Thus widowed for half of the day,
- Her duty maternal confronting,
- With baby would patiently play.
- When thus was her energy wasted,
- A patented food she'd dispense.
- (She had bought it the day that they pasted
- The posters all over her fence.)
-
- But Bonaparte Buckingham Bunting,
- The infant thus blindly adored,
- Replied to her worship by grunting,
- Which showed he was brutally bored.
- 'T was little he cared for the troubles
- Of life. Like a crab on the sands,
- From his sweet little mouth he blew bubbles,
- And threatened the air with his hands.
-
- Bartholomew Benjamin Bunting
- One night, as his wife let him in,
- Produced as the fruit of his hunting
- A cottontail's velvety skin,
- Which, seeing young Bonaparte wriggle,
- He gave him without a demur,
- And the babe with an aqueous giggle
- He swallowed the whole of the fur!
-
- Belinda Bellonia Bunting
- Behaved like a consummate loon:
- Her offspring in frenzy confronting
- She screamed herself mottled maroon:
- She felt of his vertebrae spinal,
- Expecting he'd surely succomb,
- And gave him one vigorous, final,
- Hard prod in the pit of his tum.
-
- But Bonaparte Buckingham Bunting,
- At first but a trifle perplexed,
- By a change in his manner of grunting
- Soon showed he was horribly vexed.
- He displayed not a sign of repentance
- But spoke, in a dignified tone,
- The only consecutive sentence
- He uttered. 'T was: "Lemme alone."
-
- The Moral: The parent that uses
- Precaution his folly regrets:
- An infant gets all that he chooses,
- An infant chews all that he gets.
- And colics? He constantly has 'em
- So long as his food is the best,
- But he'll swallow with never a spasm
- What ostriches couldn't digest.
"The Singular Sangfroid of
Baby Bunting" is reprinted from A Nonsense Anthology.
Ed. Carolyn Wells. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1915. |
MORE POEMS BY GUY WETMORE CARRYL |
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