Melfort Dalton, I knew you well
With your frozen eyes and your spastic stance.
Ah, but your voice was clear as a bell
When you tenored the ladies into a trance;
The finest tenor in town you were,
Finest; but those were the days of yore,
Oh, but weren't you arrogant then,
Weren't you arrogant, Chanticleer,
When you told each hostess to go to hell:
" I'll sing what I like and I'll read the score " ?
Little they knew; but I knew what you meant:
Yourself you first had to magnify
Before your notes unto Heaven were sent —
(Peacocks and tenors and G.P.I.)
I knew it, and that is the reason why
I now am recording the wonderful tale
Of how you received an offer to come,
Though your eyes and your legs were beginning to fail,
And sing at St. Joseph's Old Maids' Home,
And all the honours you gained therefrom.

We sat in the nearest respectable bar
Waiting the message of how you fared;
And, though we wished it, we were not for
Success overwhelming quite prepared.
Sitting we waited and tippled the ale;
In came the scout with the wonderful word
Of how they tittered and how you scored:
" Called back four times. " And we roared, " Waes-hael!
Melfort has done it again, good Lord! "
We were not allowed in the Old Maids' Home;
And rightly so, for they might be scared;
But " Here, boy, here. Tell us all How Come? "
" He shuffled at first, then he came to a stand.
He did not bow as a fav'rite should
(He knew that his balance was none too good)
But he stared with a visage inane and bland. "
" But how did he merit such great applause?
Be more explicit, you poor recorder? "
" Once for singing, and thrice because
His dress revealed a quaint disorder. "

Moral

( Non Nobis )

A moral lies in this occurrence:
Let those who have too much assurance
And think that public approbation
That comes from songs or an oration
Is due but to their own desert,
Remember Melfort Dalton's shirt.