The Westerns and the Easterns

Part 1 

And they laid the black snake on the ground

The gravel was thrashed all around

With its tail like a whale, a fluke-like flail

We could not fail to gasp at what he'd found

It lay coiled up under the bridge

Such an adder as this none could miss

A giant constrictor oh what a restrictor

Of voices and lips it would kiss

Hercules wrestled the black viper

The fight went back and forth like a wiper

First it was his, then it was hiss

And none could miss that snake sound

Oh but the path filled with laughter

As finally the snake gave up its ever-after

And said a hissing prayer then it rose in the air

And laid back down on the ground

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Part 2

Jason came out to Westbury

One day just as the lambs did lay

And the sheep in their golden wooliness

Bleated along the Strawberry way

Some wolves I saw a stalking

And an Argonaut felled one with a thrust

Then they fought the skeletons

That came dancing up the road in the dust

Jason soon helped in the laying of 

a mighty pipeline that lay

All the way from the Phoenician isles

Down to the Strawberry way

The culvert had been dug

By many hands before him

The Argonauts with the merry seamen

Heavy black pipes they lugged

Oracles from Far Orient-Easton

Came walking predicting the weather

And their dogs like howling hyenas

barked at the end of their tethers

Those Westerly westerners of Westbury Way

Charged mighty high words in the air that day

For this salt track nearly broke the camel's back

When the strawberry liners made hay

Achilles could have twisted his ankle

Agamemnon probably will

Helen of Troy with her entourage of boys

Is sure to pick up the bill

Somebody asked for a pick axe

Somebody for shovel

Somebody asked, he wore a mask

And I think that he lived in a hovel

Hitting hard bedrock with a wrecking bar

Laying down and going to sleep

The only ones not with a headache

Were the bleating, baaing sheep

When we finished laying piper Alpha

Alpha piper piped up and called for the pub

So we pootled on down to the Westbury arms

And we drank while we thought about grub

Not much of note really happened

It was another day for the argonauts

We could have shot for the stars

And hit the moon, but instead we did what we ought

There was a hovering sparrow hawk

And there were many wild flowers sown

I think that I should have done more work

But as it was time already had flown