Mr. Punch’s History of the Great War
There is one thing, however, that war at its worst cannot do. It cannot make an Englishman forgo that peculiar and blessed birthright which enables him to overthrow the Giant Despair with the weapon of whimsical humour—in other words, to write, as a young officer has written for Mr. Punch, such a set of verses as the following in June, 1918:
THE BEST SMELL OF ALL
When noses first were carved for men
Of varied width and height,
Strange smells and sweet were fashioned then
That all might know delight—
Smells for the hooked, the snub, the fine,
The pug, the gross, the small,
A smell for each, and one divine
Last smell to soothe them all.
The baccy smell, the smell of peat,
The rough gruff smell of tweed,
The rain smell on a dusty street
Are all good smells indeed;
The sea smell smelt through resinous trees,
The smell of burning wood,
The saintly smell of dairies—these
Are all rich smells and good.
And good the smell the nose receives
From new-baked loaves, from hops,
From churches, from decaying leaves,
From pinks, from grocers' shops;
And smells of rare and fine bouquet
Proceed, the world allows,
From petrol, roses, cellars, hay,
Scrubbed planks, hot gin and cows.
But there's a smell that doth excel
All other smells by far,
Even the tawny stable smell
Or the boisterous smell of tar ;
A smell stupendous, past compare,
The king of smells, the prize,
That smell which floods the startled air
When home-cured bacon fries!
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