This thread has brought to mind for me a humorous poem from long-ish ago, which has given me a laugh ever since I first happened upon it, way back. (Its railway theme is especially appropriate for these Forums.) With my having managed to access the text afresh, after long having been without it: am reproducing it below. It's by E.V. Knox, dating from the 1920s: a "mickey-take" of what seems to have been something of a literary vogue at the time -- earnest poetry, and prose, about grim / tragic doings and afflictions in an English rural setting. It is a direct parody -- even to its title, The Everlasting Percy -- of the much longer, and a bit earlier, The Everlasting Mercy by John Masefield; with, I suspect, a side-swipe at A.E. Housman's rather numerous, highly glum, and seemingly one-track-minded "sad Shropshire lad" poems. The comedy for me in "Percy", is the sheer disproportionate-ness: the speaker's very extreme, quasi-religious; penitence, shame, and woeful breast-beating over, on his part, sub-optimal -- but mostly, in the general scheme of things, trivial -- behaviour during his travels on passenger trains the length and breadth of Britain. While some of the things he confesses to, are rather reprehensible; his verbal beating-himself-up would be more appropriate to the deeds of a particularly sadistic serial killer.
I used to be a fearful lad,
The things I did were downright bad;
And worst of all was what I done
From seventeen to twenty-one
On all the railways far and wide
From sinfulness and shameful pride.
For several years I was so wicked
I used to go without a ticket,
And travelled underneath the seat
Down in the dust of people's feet,
Or else I sat as bold as brass
And told them "Season" in First Class.
In 1921, at Harwich,
I smoked in a non-smoking carriage;
I never knew what Life or Art meant,
I wrote "Reserved" on my compartment,
And once (I was a guilty man)
I swopped the labels on guard's van.
From 1922 to '4,
I leant against the carriage door
Without a-looking at the latch,
And once, a-leaving Colney Hatch,
I put a huge and heavy parcel
Which I were taking to Newcastle,
Entirely filled with lumps of lead,
Up on the rack above my head;
And when it tumbled down, oh Lord !
I pulled communication cord.
The guard came round and said, "You mule !
What have you done, you dirty fool?"
I simply sat and smiled, and said
"Is this train right for Holyhead?"
He said, "You blinking blasted swine,
You'll have to pay the five-pound fine."
I gave a false name and address.
Puffed up with my vaingloriousness,
At Bickershaw and Strood and Staines
I've often got on moving trains,
And once alit at Norwood West
Before my coach had come to rest.
A window and a lamp I broke
At Chipping Sodbury and Stoke,
And worse I did at Whissendine:
I threw out bottles on the line
And other articles as be
Likely to cause grave injury
To persons working on the line --
That's what I did at Whissendine.
I grew so careless what I'd do
Throwing things out, and dangerous too:
That, last and worst of all I've done,
I threw a great sultana bun
Out of the train at Pontypridd --
It hit a platelayer, it did.
I thought that I would have to swing,
And never hear the sweet birds sing --
The jury recommended mercy,
And that's how grace was given to Percy.
And now I have a motor-bike,
And up and down the roads I hike;
I've got a flapper on my carrier,
And some day I am going to marry her.
