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The Lamprey

The lot of the lamprey is perfectly grand.
As a larva he sleeps in a burrow of sand
And only at night, will he come out to spy
With his curious, shining white, pineal eye.

Until, getting older, he's seized by the notion
Of working down-stream till he reaches the ocean
In his earlier years, he looks perfectly sweet—
Iridescent and slender—the young Ammocoete.

But later in life, his dread features appal;
You'd never believe 'twas the same beast at all.
His mode of existence is perfectly vile,
For all round his mouth, there's a circular file.

Which he uses to rasp some poor innocent victim
And will not desist until he has licked him.
This he does by a method revoltingly low,
By sucking him dry, before he lets go.

Pehaps I should mention his favourite dish
Is a well-grown and healthy, fat salt-water fish.
At last, when his thirst's lost its pristine severity,
He decides to migrate and consider posterity.

Thinking—"Time"s getting on, before it's too late,
I'll return to the river and look for a mate."
Like old men the world over, the male has a grouch,
Which he keeps in a quaint sub-oesophageal pouch.

You see he can't eat—though he thinks that he oughter
And so he gets shorter and shorter, and shorter
Though he shrinks from this shrinkage he's got to endure,
Until the day comes when the creature's mature.

And that is the tale of this blood-suclcing rascal.
Its all been icorked out by one—F. Gerald Maskell.
Don't attempt to eat lampreys, their flesh is accurs'd;
Or you'll die of a surfeit like Henry the First.