Threaten me with aches and pains.
Let me end this wintry summer,
'Mid the rain as best I may,
Without calling in the plumber,
For he always comes to stay.

I appreciate the Prince's
Shrewd remarks about our lot;
But the horror he evinces
At our dangers, frights me not.
Science in expostulation,
Shows our rules of health are wrong;
But in days when sanitation
Was unknown, men lived as long.

If the air with microbes thickens,
Like some mirk malefic mist,
Tell me prithee how the dickens
We can manage to exist.
From the poison breathed each minute,
Man ere this had surely died;
When we see the fell things in it,
On the microscopic slide.

I'm aware we're oft caught napping,
And the scientist can say,
That our yawning drains want trapping,
Lest the deadly typhoid stay.
Even with your house in order,
If you go to take the air,