Oh, Pshaw!

Mr. George Bernard Shaw’s recent praise of Bolshevism and all its works has awakened grave enthusiasm among the serious-minded and humorless Russians, but only an amused smile among English-speaking peoples, who know him better.

A queer, paradoxical, mellow old fellow
is Shaw.
With jokes will he hoax you to finally
bellow, “Haw, haw!”
Verbosity ironic, tho’ seldom laconic,
He tickles the ear with his phrases euphonie.
For noodles a nostrum, for thinkers a tonic—
That’s Shaw.

He dines upon carrots at table, and jeers
at your meat;
He stands on his head, when he’s able,
and sneers at your feet.
He’ll gird at the bee while it gathers
its honey;
He’ll laugh at the ant, yet he’s funny
with money,
And hoards it in heaps while the going
is sunny
And sweet.

So pity the Bolshevic birds he has
“brothered,” this Shaw,
When later he laughs at his words with
a smothered guffaw.
At present they praise and report him
verbatim.
They love him today, but tomorrow
they’ll hate him,
While we cry, who have known him,
and learned how to rate him:
“Oh, pshaw!”