Out of Sorts

When you find you’re a broken-down critter,
Who is all of a trimmle and twitter,
With your palate unpleasantly bitter,
As if you’d just bitten a pill –
When your legs are as thin as dividers,
And you’re plagued with unruly insiders,
And your spine is all creepy with spiders,
And you’re highly gamboge in the gill –
When you’ve got a beehive in your head,
And a sewing machine in each ear,
And you feel that you’ve eaten your bed,
And you’ve got a bad headache DOWN HERE –
When such facts are about,
And these symptoms you find
In your body or crown –
Well, it’s time to look out,
You may make up your mind
You had better lie down!

When your lips are all smeary – like tallow,
And your tongue is decidedly yallow,
With a pint of warm oil in your swAllow,
And a pound of tin-tacks in your chest –
When you’re down in the mouth with the vapours,
And all over your new Morris papers
Black-beetles are cutting their capers,
And crawly things never at rest –
When you doubt if your head is your own,
And you jump when an open door slams –
Then you’ve got to a state which is known
To the medical world as “jim-jams.”
If such symptoms you find
In your body or head,
They’re not easy to quell –
You may make up your mind
You are better in bed,
For you’re not at all well!