From Rude Rural Rhymes by Bob Adams, New York: The Macmillan Company; 1925; pp. 109-110.
SWAT THEM NOW
Helena Hicks is witty and wise
With adequate muscles and accurate eyes,
Adapted for spotting and swatting the flies.
When any youth a partner picks
He’d better marry Helen Hicks
Than almost any other six.
This bard of old and bald and wary,
Of all strange drinking water scary,
Since first he heard of Typhoid Mary.
But what avails his constant care
When flies are swarming everywhere?
When, in the good old summer time,
Which singers sing and rhymers rhyme,
He sits at peace with all mankind,
With nothing much upon his mind
And very little on his skin,
Those blamed invertebrates begin.
They came from stables and from worse
To boost the business of the hearse.
They come from garbage heaps and such,
Defiling everything they touch,
With germs to slay our wives and widdies,
Our grandads and our pretty kiddies.
[110]
Yea, many men have chills and itch,
Have glanders, pip and little limbs that twitch,
And many little children die,
Because we fail to swat the fly.
Let’s smite the critter for his sins,
His wives, his triplets and his twins,
For all we miss will pull their freight,
Go off somewhere and propagate.