Explore "The Automobile (Club Cantos)" by Harry Graham on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Pall Mall was a sober and dignified street / In the days (say) of Dickens or Marryat, / Where statesmen their peers would with courtesy greet, / Where the senator sauntered on leisurely feet, / And the dowager drove in her chariot. / The War Office entries / Were guarded by sentries; / But Mars was polite to the Graces, / And officers' mothers, / Their sisters, and others, / Called daily on those in high places, / Demanding, with true patriotic devotion, / Their sons' (or their brothers') more rapid promotion!
Times changed. The old War Office warren was scrapped, / And this suitable site was selected / By motorists, goggled, befurred, and peak-capped, / As a central position excessively apt / For the Palace of Fun they erected. / In place of old quiet / Came racket and riot, / As cars at the club kept arriving, / Or p'licemen in torrents / Poured in, to serve warrants / On members for 'furious driving'; / Where amateur chauffeurs, resolved to be jolly, / Were drowning dull care in a 'Petrol and Polly'!