The Spoonbill Generator

Her incursions, from the North,       [Apsley ]

Would not have pleased the throne       [Roland ]

Which promptly uttered letters forth       [Apsley ]

To claim it for their own       [Roland ]

To claim it, for a nobler line,       [Apsley ]

That had not lived till now       [Roland ]

That had not drunk a finer wine       [Apsley ]

Than issues from a sow       [Roland ]

Her incursions, so say I,       [Apsley ]

Would scarce have pleased the King       [Roland ]

Who might have told the Queen to lie       [Apsley ]

While hierophants took wing       [Roland ]

To claim it, for their noble kin,       [Apsley ]

That stood as yet unborn       [Roland ]

(Though not for want of venal sin)       [Chevalier ]

Before the regal scorn       [Roland ]

Her incursions, once again,       [Apsley ]

Would never have betrayed       [Roland ]

Her kind intentions to the State       [Apsley ]

Had not her brother strayed       [Chevalier ]

Beyond all bounds of harmony       [Roland ]

Into the realms of gloom       [Apsley ]

Where Southern rebels take their tea       [Roland ]

A' the Brink o' Doom       [Apsley ]

There, and there again, perhaps       [Roland ]

Incursions count for naught       [Apsley ]

And any boundaries on our maps       [Bex ]

Might not through war be wrought       [Apsley ]

To pacify the ne'er-do-well       [Roland ]

Or beard him in his lair       [Apsley ]

With book and candle; with a bell       [Roland ]

To light his greasy hair       [Apsley ]

And pacify such malcontents       [Roland ]

As lurk athwart his fire       [Apsley ]

In plain affront to commonsense       [Roland ]

And rules of sale and hire       [Apsley ]

And so it was that, later,       [[Keith Reid] ]

As Max Miller told a Tale,       [Apsley ]

The regal alligator       [Roland ]

Drank a wide-rimmed glass of pale       [Apsley ]

The hierophants, in later times       [Roland ]

Behind the iron sea,       [Apsley ]

Abandoned runes, forsook all rhymes       [Roland ]

And chortled in their glee       [Apsley Carrollish ]

Envoi       [Roland ]

Blind oblivion's not our fate       [Apsley ]

So long as we procrastinate.       [Roland ]

For, in the ruins of our realm,       [Apsley ]

There's none but I to take the helm       [Chevalier ]