Don't Look a Gift-Horse in the Mouth by Harry Graham

I knew a man who lived down South; / He thought this maxim to defy; / He looked a Gift-horse in the Mouth; / The Gift-horse bit him in the Eye! / And, while the steed enjoyed his bite, / My Southern friend mislaid his sight.

Now, had this foolish man, that day, / Observed the Gift-horse in the _Heel_, / It might have kicked his brains away, / But that's a loss he would not feel; / Because, you see (need I explain? ), / My Southern friend has got no brain.

When any one to you presents / A poodle, or a pocket-knife, / A set of Ping-pong instruments, / A banjo or a lady-wife, / 'Tis churlish, as I understand, / To grumble that they're second-hand.

And he who termed Ingratitude / As 'worser nor a servant's tooth' / Was evidently well imbued / With all the elements of Truth; / (While he who said 'Uneasy lies / The tooth that wears a crown' was wise).

'One must be poor,' George Eliot said, / 'To know the luxury of giving'; / So too one really should be dead / To realise the joy of living. / (I'd sooner be -- I don't know which -- / I'd _like_ to be alive and rich! )

_This_ book may be a Gift-horse too, / And one you surely ought to prize; / If so, I beg you, read it through, / With kindly and uncaptious eyes, / Not grumbling because this particular line doesn't happen to scan, / And this one doesn't rhyme!