Social Commentaries

The Baby's Baedeker: Germany

by Harry Graham 1874–1936

From Verse and Worse (1905)

Social Commentaries

The German is a stolid soul,
And finds best suited to his taste
A pipe with an enormous bowl,
A fraulein with an ample waist;
He loves his beer, his Kaiser, and
(Donner und blitz!) his Fatherland!

He's perfectly contented if
He listens in the Op'ra-house
To Wagner's well-concealed 'motif,'
Or waltzes of the nimble Strauss;
And all discordant bands he sends
Abroad, to soothe his foreign friends.

When he is glad at anything
He cheers like a dyspeptic goat,
'Hoch! hoch!' You'd think him suffering
From some affection of the throat.
A disagreeable noise, 'tis true,
But pleases him and don't hurt you!

MORAL
A glass of lager underneath the bough,
A long 'churchwarden' and an ample 'frau'
Beside me sitting in a Biergarten,
Ach! Biergarten were paradise enow!

MLA

Graham, Harry. “The Baby's Baedeker: Germany.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/graham_h/56/.

Chicago

Graham, Harry. “The Baby's Baedeker: Germany.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/graham_h/56/.

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