Title: The Bicycle Song



When you're lying awake

With a dismal headache

And repose is taboo'd by anxiety

I concede you may use

Any language you choose

To indulge in without impropriety

For your brain is on fire,

Your bedclothes conspire

Of usual slumber to plunder you

First your counterpane goes

And uncovers your toes

Then your sheet slips demurely from under you.

Your blanketing tickles

You feel like mixed pickles

So terribly sharp is the pricking,

And you're hot and you're cross,

And you tumble and toss

Till there's nothing twixt you and the ticking,

Then the bedclothes all creep

To the ground in a heap

And you pick'em all up in a tangle,

Next your pillow resigns

And politely declines

To remain at its usual angle,

Well, you get some repose

In the form of a doze

With hot eyeballs and head ever aching

But your slumbering teems

With such horrible dreams

That you'd very much better be waking. . .

-"The Bicycle Song"

*Iolanthe*

W.S. Gilbert