You will find me drinking rum,
Like a sailor in a slum,
You will find me drinking beer like a Bavarian.
You will find me drinking gin
In the lowest kind of inn,
Because I am a rigid Vegetarian.

So I cleared the inn of wine,
And I tried to climb the sign,
And I tried to hail the constable as “Marion.”
But he said I couldn’t speak,
And he bowled me to the Beak
Because I was a Happy Vegetarian.

(…)

No more the milk of cows
Shall pollute my private house
Than the milk of the wild mares of the Barbarian;
I will stick to port and sherry,
For they are so very, very,
So very, very, very, Vegetarian.

*****

G.K. Chesterton was an English author with a good sense of humour and a good turn of phrase. He was a loudly committed Roman Catholic, and combined a selective love of the Old Testament with a strong antisemitic streak – illogical perhaps, but not unknown among Christians; and therefore I have omitted part of the poem because of content that detracts from the joy of the piece.

‘The Logical Vegetarian’ appeared first in The Flying Inn (1914), a satirical novel in which Chesterton railed against what he saw as dreary and oppressive modernity; and it was reprinted in Wine, Water, and Song.

Illustration: G.K. Chesterton by RHL and GPT-6 Astra Light