I’ve put Miss Hopper upon the train,
And I hope to do so never again,
For must I do so, I shouldn’t wonder
If, instead of upon it, I put her under.
Never has host encountered a visitor
Less desirable, less exquisiter,
Or experienced such a tangy zest
In beholding the back of a parting guest.
Hoitful-toitful Hecate Hopper
Haunted our house and haunted it proper,
Hecate Hopper left the property
Irredeemably Hecate Hopperty.
The morning paper was her monopoly
She read it first, and Hecate Hopperly,
Handing on to the old subscriber
A wad of Dorothy Dix and fiber.
Shall we coin a phrase for “to unco-operate”?
How about trying “to Hecate Hopperate”?
On the maid’s days off she found it fun
To breakfast in bed at quarter to one.
Not only was Hecate on a diet,
She insisted that all the family try it,
And all one week end we gobbled like pigs
On rutabagas and salted figs.
She clogged the pipes and she blew the fuses,
She broke the rocker that Grandma uses,
And she ran amok in the medicine chest,
Hecate Hopper, the Polterguest.
Hecate Hopper, the Polterguest
Left stuff to be posted or expressed,
And absconded, her suavity undiminished,
With a mystery story I hadn’t finished.
If I pushed Miss Hopper under the train
I’d probably have to do it again,
For the time that I pushed her off the boat
I regretfully found Miss Hopper could float.
– Ogden Nash
Tagged: humorous poems, Ogden Nash