There’s another sort of bills-- Brazen bills! Each its diabolic task effectively fulfils, How all hunger to be paid In that paper cannonade! Will the trouble never end? Still they send and send and send, Day and night, In a clamorous appealing to the debtor’s scanty purse, In a wild and greedy grabbing for the starved and shrunken purse; And you curse, curse, curse, Sinking sure from bad to worse, Till a resolute endeavour Cries, “Now--now flit, or never, And renounce the unequal fight!” Oh, the bills, bills, bills-- They are bitter, bitter pills To digest. Smiling ghosts of pleasures flown, Lo! we greet ye with a groan; Ye will never more return, sweet hours of rest. We shall have no more repose From the stunning And the dunning; For the monster grows and grows, Till it shatters iron wills, Under crushing And unblushing Importunity. It fills With a frantic, maniac anger in the clutches of the bills, Of the bills, Of the bills, bills, bills, Of the screeching and beseeching cloud of bills. IV Comes the threatening of bills! Cruel bills! Pictures of a ruined home inspire the writers’ quills. ’Tis the last, the sorest strait, And we shrink before the fate That is bellowed in the menace of their tone. Cringing now amongst our friends, See, the humble prayer ascends For a loan! And relations--rich relations-- Will they heed our supplications? They are stone. They’ve no carking, biting, wearing, Tearing trouble of their own; No great horror of despairing Poverty they’ve ever known. Are they fathers? Are they mothers? Have they children, sisters, brothers?-- Have they hearts? Back the message comes from each. God! They preach, preach, preach, Preach A sermon on our bills, Purse-proud opulency thrills With a shudder at the bills, At the bills, Saying, “Go, go, go, Pay the money that you owe. You are blotted from our wills, From our wills, wills, wills. We shall never meet your bills-- Oh dear no, no, no. Ask the hills, hills, hills If they’ll help you in your woe-- Beg the sea to pay your bills, Pay your bills, bills, bills.” * * * * *