Our Administration
Had made a new nation—
As new as a nation could be.
A raven was flapping
Above it and snapping
His beak with a manifest glee.
“O raven, what is it you see
That causes the manifest glee?
“You can’t be designing
A programme of dining
On anything living and free.
You’re famous for dinners
That plain-speaking sinners
Condemn with the Terrible D !
(The word is abhorrent to me
That begins with the Terrible D .)
“Come down from your airy
Position and tarry
Awhile on this coconut tree,
And tell me what joying
You find in annoying
A nation so young and so free—
Not dead in the slightest degree,
But lively and healthy as we.”
The raven, complying,
Said, solemnly eying
My edible parts from the tree:
“It isn’t to nations
I look for my rations
To any extent or degree.
They don’t fill the hollow in me
To an appreciable degree.
“Yet the seasons ensuing
Will see something doing
To heighten my manifest glee.
’Tis soldiers that mostly
Appeal to my ghostly
Unusual appetite, see?
They’re easy digesting to me
With my singular appetite, see?”
Then I hammered my forehead
To think of that horrid
Old bird with his appetite free,
A-sitting there, lacking
Compassion and cracking
His beak, on a coconut tree,
As if merely saying to me:
“Oh, what a fine coconut tree.”
I said somewhat later:
“Our Administrator
Of Freedom’s estate, O see!
His Administration
Presents us a ‘nation’
That’s spelled with the Terrible D !
And ‘nation’ is hateful to me
When led by the Terrible D .”