The Motriot

'It was chickens, chickens, all the way,
With children crossing the road like mad;
Police disguised in the hedgerows lay,
Stop-watches and large white flags they had,
At nine o'clock o' this very day.

'I broke the record to Tunbridge Wells,
And I shouted aloud, to all concerned,
"Give room, good folk, do you hear my bells?"
But my motor skidded and overturned;
Then exploded--and afterwards, what smells!

'Alack! it was I rode over the son
Of a butcher; rolled him all of a heap!
Nought man could do did I leave undone;
And I thought that butcher's boys were cheap,--
But this, poor man, 'twas his only one.

'There's nobody in my motor now,--
Just a tangled car in the ditch upset;
For the fun of the fair is, all allow,
At the County Court, or, better yet,
By the very foot of the dock, I trow.

. . . . .

'Thus I entered, and thus I go;
In Court the magistrate sternly said,
"Five guineas fine, and the costs you owe!"
I might not question, so promptly paid.
Henceforth I walk; I am safer so.'