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The Phantom ex1-Curate
W S Gilbert
A Bishop once -- I will not name his see -- Annoyed his clergy in the mode conventional; From pulpit shackles never set them free, And found a sin where sin was unintentional. All pleasures ended in abuse auricular -- The Bishop was so terribly particular.
Enraged to find a deacon at a dance, Or catch a curate at some mild frivolity, He sought by open censure to enhance Their dread of joining harmless social jollity. Yet he enjoyed (a fact of notoriety) The ordinary pleasures of society.
One evening, sitting at a pantomime (Forbidden treat to those who stood in fear of him), Roaring at jokes, sans metre, sense, or rhyme, He turned, and saw immediately in rear of him, His peace of mind upsetting, and annoying it, A curate, also heartily enjoying it.
Once, yielding to an universal choice (The company's demand was an emphatic one, For the old Bishop had a glorious voice), In a quartet he joined -- an operatic one.
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Contributed by Michael Paterson
Harmless enough, though ne'er a word of grace in it, When, lo! that curate came and took the bass in it! One day, when passing through a quiet street, He stopped awhile and joined a Punch's gathering; And chuckled more than solemn folk think meet, To see that gentleman his Judy lathering; And heard, as Punch was being treated penalty, That phantom curate laughing all hyaenally.
Next, when at a quiet sea-side village, freed From cares episcopal and ties monarchical, He grows his beard, and smokes his fragrant weed, In manner anything but hierarchical -- He sees -- and fixes an unearthly stare on it -- That curate's face, with half a yard of hair on it!
At length he gave a charge, and spake this word: "Rectors, your curates to enjoyment urge ye may; To check their harmless pleasuring's absurd; What laymen do without reproach, my clergy may." He spake, and lo! at this concluding word of him, The curate vanished --
no one since has heard of him.
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