Edmund Birckhead Bensell, American
Jared, Pondering the Bajillion Other Things He’d Rather Be Doing At This Moment Than Rowing For Uber, 1878
Chromolithograph
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Info, or links that point to more info, about this artist can be found here and here (if truncated, can be read in full for free on Fridays), perhaps in addition to what’s in his Wikipedia page.
/// The other boat’s more quickly going,
no doubt because two men are rowing.
Jamie stands with his oar
while his pal tries to score
with a passenger (whose ankle’s showing).
/// Jamie stood up to look all around,
though his balance is not very sound.
It is not very shocking
that the boat isn’t rocking,
since the rocks are where they’ve run aground.
/// The man wearing a coat doesn’t care
that the rowboat is going nowhere.
And his coattail is wet,
but he still doesn’t fret.
He too hopes to begin an affair.
/// He’d boarded this boat with two women.
With hopes to charm one he was brimmin’.
A boatman was paid
to chat up his girl’s maid,
and convince them to strip for some swimmin’.
/// Jamie moved, with great effort, their boat
off the rocks so it once more could float.
With no second rower
they traveled much slower
than that other craft, far and remote.
/// They were destined to take second place
in this informal cross-the-lake race,
but the man who had hired
him, had clearly conspired
for more time in his redhead’s embrace.
/// The blonde maid with her pink parasol
thinks she has the cute boatsman in thrall.
She shades the young chap,
since his hat’s in her lap.
Soon his head is there, also, The gall!
/// She hadn’t tried hard to forestall
the rower’s too-intimate sprawl.
But then, to their dismay,
parasols blew away,
and their hats in a brief summer squall.
/// Though opponents have such a big lead,
good advice Jamie seldom would heed.
Their one chance to succeed,
(and a slim one, indeed),
was to row with great speed high on speed.