Midsummer Daymare, Ogden Nash.

Midsummer Daymare.
by Ogden Nash.

Mumbo jumbo, what have we here?
Why we have the longest day in the year.
This is the rarest day of June,
And it’s weeks and weeks from dawn to noon.
This is the calendar’s blazing highlight,
It’s months and months from noon to twilight.
Lucky are they who retain their friends
Through the day that seldom if ever ends.
Take a modest date, like December twenty,
And still the telephone jangles plenty,
Still you encounter bores enough,
Obligations and chores enough,
Visitors to avoid enough
Like something out of Freud enough,
Creditors, editors, tears and combats,
Newsreel beauties embracing wombats,
Feeble coffee and vanishing waiters,
Newsreel girls riding alligators,
Traffic and taxes and dues and duties
And candidates kissing newsreel beauties.
Oh, man has need of all his strength
To survive a day of medium length;
What wonder then, that man grows bitter
On a day that sits like a flagpole-sitter?
Mumbo jumbo, noon infernal,
This my dear, is the day eternal.
You toil for a dollar or two per diem,
You mope and hope for the blessed P.M.,
You look at the clock; you’re ready for mayhem;
Is it P.M. yet? No, it’s still the A.M.!
On farm and field, in office and park,
This is the day that won’t get dark.
Dusk is an exile, night has fled,
Never again shall we get to bed,
The sun has swallowed the moon and stars,
Midnight lies with the buried Czars.
This is the guerdon of prayer and fasting:
Glorious day, day everlasting!