"Mikado"

A wandering minstrel I —
A thing of shreds and patches,
Of ballads, songs and snatches,

You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable.

I'm sorry for you,
You very imperfect ablutioner!
I'm sorry to be
Of your pleasure a diminutioner.
She'll toddle away, as all aver,
With the Lord High Executioner!

And the people who eat peppermint and puff it in your face,
They never would be missed — they never would be missed!

Three little maids who, all unwary,
Come from a ladies' seminary,
Freed from its genius tutelary —

Modified rapture!  / con fucio / gioco  /

To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock,
In a pestilential prison, with a life-long lock,
Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock,
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!

I mean to rule the earth,
As he the sky —
We really know our worth,
The sun and I!

As for my circulation, it is the largest in the world.

Hearts do not break!
They sting and ache
For old love's sake,
But do not die,

But the fire will not be smothered — it defies all attempts at extinction, and, breaking forth, all the more eagerly for its long restraint, it declares itself in words that will not be weighed — that cannot be schooled — that should not be too severely criticised.

Yes, in spite of all my meekness,
If I have a little weakness,
It's a passion for a flight of thunderbolts!