E-text prepared by Lesley Halamek, Juliet Sutherland, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 26454-h.htm or 26454-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/6/4/5/26454/26454-h/26454-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/6/4/5/26454/26454-h.zip) PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI VOLUME 104, MAY 6TH 1893 edited by Sir Francis Burnand A PATHETIC LAMENT. (_Respectfully addressed to one of the Promoters of the Anti-Advertisement League by a Repentant Subscriber._) [Illustration] I. BEING gifted with decent taste and a sensitive eye, I have never been much beguiled By advertisements, crude in colour, and ten feet high (Which, in fact, I rather reviled); And, as for gigantic signs swinging up in the sky-- They drove me perfectly wild! II. Then the lurid posters on paling and chimney-stack Were the terror of every town-- Till a League was started by Mr. WILLIAM BLACK For the purpose of putting them down; And the sympathetic invited its efforts to back With an annual half-a-crown. III. So I cheerfully paid the fee, and my name was enrolled, And a solemn oath I swore; (As is usual on such occasions,--or so I'm told) That, in future, no shop or store Which aggressively advertised any article sold I would patronise any more! IV. But that mad rash oath I recall with a vain regret, As I brood in bitter complaint, On the number of useful things that I'm dying to get-- And my conscience tells me I mayn't! As their various virtues are vaunted in letters of jet, Or gaudier gilding and paint! V. I should like to be clean if I could--but I cannot cope, Without saponaceous aid, With a shower of London smuts--and I'm losing hope, Getting daily a dingier shade, In a futile search for a genuine Toilet-soap That has shunned meretricious parade! VI. My villa would be--when it's furnished--the cosiest nest, But I fear it is doomed to be bare; For upholsterers' puffs are now a persistent pest, And so shamelessly each will declare His "Elegant Dining and Drawing-room suites" are the "cheapest and best"-- That I daren't choose so much as a _chair_! VII. I would fly to the Ocean shore, or the Continent, To escape from a lot accurst; But here, by my own parole, I'm a prisoner pent! I must find a Company first That doesn't resort to obtrusive advertisement-- And the Railway ones are the _worst_! VIII. And now I'm developing symptoms of bodily ills, But, however sanguine I've felt, Of a cure from So-and-So's Syrup, Elixir, or Pills, Or his Neuro-magnetic Belt-- Can I buy, when their fame is based on a stratum of bills Down every area dealt? IX.