There’s a wind up that licks like a flame, <br />And the sun is a porthole of hell. <br />Now evanish prim notions of shame, <br />And the craving to look rather well – <br />In pyjamas you’re never a swell, <br />And you’ve chosen some roomily made. <br />Oh! for ices these pangs to dispel – <br />It’s one hundred and nine in the shade! <br /> <br />We have limped in from tennis. That game ! – <br />I’d as soon with the damned where they dwell <br />Stoke a furnace and bathe in the same! <br />There’s no drink human craving to quell, <br />Not thin chablis nor sweet muscatel. <br />Never more shall we see, I’m afraid, <br />The cool shallows, the pale asphodel. <br />It’s one hundred and nine in the shade. <br /> <br />You recline an invertebrate frame <br />In the moisture your atoms expel, <br />‘Gainst the fates very feebly declaim, <br />All too limp to rise up and rebel. <br />Action flies and mosquitoes compel. <br />We make pitiful fight ‘gainst the raid <br />With a cloying and nauseous smell <br />In one hundred and nine in the shade. <br /> <br />ENVOY <br />Here might solids of Hamlet dispel. <br />Quick the answer to prayer that he prayed. <br />Human flesh turns to dew ‘neath the spell <br />Of one hundred and nine in the shade.<br /><br />Edward George Dyson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-thermometrical-ballade/
