Lord Chancellor's Nightmare Song

The **Lord Chancellor's Nightmare Song** is a song that appeared in the comic opera Iolanthe by Gilbert and Sullivan. It is a patter song and therefore is sung at a rapid rate.

### **Lord Chancellor's Nightmare Song**

Love unrequited, robs me of me rest,

Love, hopeless love, my ardent soul encumbers,

Love, nightmare like, lies heavy of me chest,

And weaves itself into my midnight slumbers.

When you're lying awake with a dismal headache and

Repose is taboo'd by anxiety,

I conceive you may use any language you choose to

Indulge in, without impropriety;

For your brain is on fire, the bed-clothes conspire of

Usual slumber to plunder you:

First your counter-pane goes, and uncovers your toes,

And your sheet slips demurely from under you;

Then the 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 'til there's nothing 'twixt you and the ticking.

Then the bed-clothes 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 it's usual angle!

Well, you get some repose in the form of a dose, with

Hot eye-balls and head ever aching,

But your slumbering teems with such horrible dreams

That you'd very much better be waking;

For you dream you are crossing the channel, and

Tossing about in a steamer from harwich,

Which is something between a large bathing machine and

A very small second class carriage,

And you're giving a treat (penny ice and cold meat) to

A party of friends and relations,

They're a ravenous horde, and they all come on board

At sloane square and south kensington stations.

And bound on that journey you find your attorney

(who started this morning from devon);

He's a bit undersiz'd and you don't feel surpris'd

When he tells you he's only eleven.

Well you're driving like mad with this singular lad

(by the bye the ship's now a four wheeler),

And you're playing round games, and he calls you bad

Names when you tell him that "ties pay the dealer";

But this you can't stand so you throw up your hand,

And you find you're as cold as an icicle;

In your shirt and your socks (the black silk with gold clocks)

Crossing sal'sbury plain on a bicycle:

And he and the crew are on bicycles too, which they've

Somehow or other invested in,

And he's telling the tars all the particulars of a

Company he's interested in;

It's a scheme of devices, to get at low prices, all

Good from cough mixtures to cables

(which tickled the sailors), by treating retailers as

Though they were all vegetables;

You get a good spadesman to plant a small tradesman

(first take off his boots with a boot tree),

And his legs will take root, and his fingers will

Shoot, and they'll blossom and bud like a fruit tree;

From the green grocer tree you get grapes and green

Pea, cauliflower, pine apple and cranberries,

While the pastry cook plant cherry brandy will grant,

Apple puffs, and three corners, and banburys;

The shares are a penny and ever so many are taken by

Rothschild and baring,

And just as a few are allotted to you, you awake

And with a shudder despairing

You're a regular wreck, with a crick in your neck, and

No wonder you snore, for your head's on the floor

And you've needles and pins from your soles to your

Shins, and your flesh is acreep, for your left leg's asleep,

And you've cramp in your toes, and a fly on your nose,

And some fluff in your lung, and a feverish tongue,

And a thirst that's intense,

And a general sense that you haven't been sleeping in clover;

But the darkness has pass'd, and it's daylight at

Last, and the night has been long, ditto, ditto my song,

And thank goodness they're both of them over!