Ode to Four-Letter Words

Banish the use of those four-letter words


Whose meanings are never obscure.


The Angles and Saxons, those bawdy old birds,


Were vulgar, obscene, and impure.


But cherish the use of the weak-kneed phrase


That never quite says what you mean;


Far better you stick to your hypocrite ways


Than be vulgar, or coarse, or obscene.


When Nature is calling, plain speaking is out,


When ladies, God bless 'em, are milling about,


You make water, wee-wee, or empty the glass;


You can powder your nose; "Excuse me" may pass;


Shake the dew off the lily; see a man 'bout a dog;


Or when everyone's soused, it's condensing the fog,


But be pleased to consider and remember just this -


That only in Shakespeare do characters piss!


You may speak of a movement, or sit on a seat,


Have a passage, or stool, or simply excrete;


Or say to the others, "I'm going out back,"


Then groan in pure joy in that smelly old shack.


You can go lay a cable, or do number two,


Or sit on the toidy and make a do-do,


But ladies and men who are socially fit


Under no provocation will go take a shit!


When your dinners are hearty with onions and beans,


With garlic and claret and bacon and greens;


Your bowels get so busy distilling a gas


That Nature insists you permit it to pass.


You are very polite, and you try to exhale


Without noise or odour - you frequently fail -


Expecting a zephyr, you carefully start,


But even a deaf one would call it a fart!


A woman has bosoms, a bust or a breast.


Those lily-white swellings that bulge 'neath her vest;


They are towers of ivory, sheaves of new wheat;


In a moment of passion, ripe apples to eat.


You may speak of her nipples as small rings of fire


With hardly a question of raising her ire;


But by Rabelais's beard, she'll throw fifteen fits


If you speak of them roundly as good honest tits!


It's a cavern of joy you are thinking of now,


A warm, tender field just awaiting the plough


It's a quivering pigeon caressing your hand,


Or that sweet little pussy that makes a man stand.


Or perhaps it's a flower, a grotto, a well,


The hope of the world, or a velvety hell.


But, friend, heed this warning, beware the affront


Of aping a Saxon: don't call it a cunt!


Though a lady repel your advance, she'll be kind


Just as long as you intimate what's on your mind.


You may tell her you're hungry, you need to be swung,


You may ask her to see how your etchings are hung.


You may mention the ashes that need to be hauled;


Put the lid on her sauce-pan, but don't be to bold;


For the moment you're forthright, get ready to duck -


The girl isn't born yet who'll stand for "Let's fuck!"


Banish the use of those four-letter words


Whose meanings are never obscure.


The Angles and Saxons, those bawdy old birds,


Were vulgar, obscene, and impure.


But cherish the use of the weak-kneed phrase


That never quite says what you mean;


Far better you stick to your hypocrite ways


Than be vulgar, or coarse, or obscene.