It was a grand upstanding bantam cock,
So brisk and stiff and spry,
With springy step and jaunty plume
And a purposeful look in his eye,
In his little black blinking eye, he had.
I took him to the coop and introduced him
To my seventeen wide-eyed hens.
He tupped and he tupped as a hero tups
And he bowed from the waist to them all, and then
He upped and he tupped 'em all again, he did.
And then upon the peace of me ducks and me geese
He rudely did intrude.
With glazed eyes and open mouths
They bore it all with fortitude
And a little bit of gratitude, they did.
He jumped my giggling guinea fowl
And forced his attentions upon
My twenty hysterical turkeys and
A visiting migrant swan.
But the bantam thundered on, he did.
He ravished my fan-tailed pigeons and
Me lily-white columbines,
And while I was locking up the budgerigar
He jumped my parrot from behind;
She was sitting on me shoulder at the time.
And all of a sudden with a gasp and a gulp
He clapped his hands to his head,
Fell flat on his back with his toes in the air.
My bantam cock lay dead
And the vultures circled overhead, they did.
What a champion brute; what a noble cock;
What a way to live and to die.
I was digging him a grave to save his bones
From the hungry buzzards in the sky
When the bantam opened up a sly little eye.
He gave me a grin and a terrible wink,
The way that rapists do.
He said, "You see them big daft buggers up there?
They'll be down in a minute or two;
They'll be down in a minute or two".
- the late, great Jake Thackeray.
