Wayward Willie

Baby whimpered for a drink;

Willie filled her up with ink.

Mama, laughing at the lad,

Fed the babe with blotting pad.

                    Clev. Plain Dealer

Papa quick as quick could be

Took the filler which you see

Used to fill a fountain pen –

Pumped the baby out again.                        

                                                                                  

                        

April 3, ‘09

Little Willie Poems – Originated with Harry Graham in ‘Ruthless Rhymes’ (1898), which became a popular inspiration for many others to follow.
                                                                   http://ruthlessrhymes.com/category/little_willies/little-willie-poems

Jocelyn Henry Clive 'Harry' Graham (23 December 1874 – 30 October 1936) was an English writer. He was a successful journalist and later, after distinguished military service, a leading lyricist for operettas and musical comedies, but he is now best remembered as a writer of humorous verse in a style of grotesquerie and black humour.

     His first published works appeared during his military career. In 1906, he became a full-time writer, as a journalist and author of light verse, popular fiction and history, including A Group of Scottish Women (1908).

     Graham is best remembered for his series of cheerfully cruel Ruthless Rhymes, first published in 1898 under the pseudonym Col. D. Streamer, a reference to his regiment. These were described by The Times, in an editorial that compared him to Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll and W. S. Gilbert, as "that enchanted world where there are no values nor standards of conduct or feeling, and where the plainest sense is the plainest nonsense". The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography also compares his verse with that of W. S. Gilbert and suggests that his prose was an early influence on P. G. Wodehouse.

                                                                   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Graham_(poet)