<i>Clough</i> <br /> <br /> <br />Hastily Adam our driver swallowed a curse in the darkness-- <br />Petrol nigh at end and something wrong with a sprocket <br />Made him speer for the nearest town, when lo! at the crossways <br />Four blank letterless arms the virginal signpost extended. <br />"Look!" thundered Hugh the Radical. "This is the England we <br />boast of-- <br />Bland, white-bellied, obese, but utterly useless for business. <br />They are repainting the signs and have left the job in the middle. <br />They are repainting the signs and traffic may stop till they've <br />done it, <br />Which is to say: till the son-of-a-gun of a local contractor, <br />Having laboriously wiped out every name for <br />Probably thirty miles round, be minded to finish his labour! <br />Had not the fool the sense to paint out and paint in together?" <br /> <br />Thus, not seeing his speech belied his Radical Gospel <br />(Which is to paint out the earth and then write "Damn" on the <br />shutter), <br />Hugh embroidered the theme imperially and stretched it <br />From some borough in Wales through our Australian possessions, <br />Making himself, reformer-wise, a bit of a nuisance <br />Till, with the help of Adam, we cast him out on the landscape.<br /><br />Rudyard Kipling<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-bother/
