HELP! Help! they want to burn my pictures,
they want to make an
auto-da-fe!
They
want to make an act of faith, and burn my pretty
pictures.
They’ve
seized and carried them away!
Help! Help! I am calling in English
is the language dead and empty
of reply!
The Unholy
Inquisition has arrested all my pictures,
a magistrate, and six fat
smaller fry.
Six fat smaller bobbies are the inquisitors
minor
who’ve decided
that Boccaccio must burn.
But the Grand Inquisitor is a stale
magistrate
in
Marlborough Road, and it is now his turn.
Oh he has put his pince-nez on, and stoutly has stepped
down
to the
police-station cell
where my darling pictures, prisoners, await his deadly
frown
and his
grand-inquisitorial knell.
Oh he knows all about it, he casts a yellow
eye
on the gardener
whose shirt’s blown back:
Burn that! — he sees Eve running from the likes
of him: I
order you,
destroy the whole vile pack. —
All my pretty pictures huddled in the dark awaiting
their doom at the hands of Mr
Meade.
But the day
they burn my pictures they burn the rose of
England
and fertilise the weeds on
every mead.
Help! Oh
help! they want to burn my pictures
we’ve got the Inquisition back
with a set of cankered
magistrates and busy-busy bobbies.
Look out, my lad, you’ve got ‘em on your
track.