Poem: Bowler hats

Bowler hats

I hate a man who wears brown boots
Disdains a pipe and smokes cheroots
A double-breasted waistcoat fills
Me with unfathomable ills
Plus fours are not one of my bents
Or natty hose for natty gents
But what upsets my every molar
Is he who wears the genteel British bowler

The bowler has a lethal shape
It has a bloom just like a grape
It should be covered up with crêpe
For it will always be
A gloomy headwear to be wearing
Derided when you are out of hearing
A hissing and in fact sneering
A strange monstrosity

It cannot quite be called a hat
It has not enough brim for that
Differing opinions might be well met
In terming it a kind of helmet
And yet it’s not the sort of cattle
That one would fancy for a battle
I fear until the Trump of Doom
I shall not see man add a plume
A panache crest or white cockade
Oh what a difference would have made!

I do not mean this ode to be
Aimed at the Foreign Secretary*
In fact I am very wary
Of the Foreign Secretary

But bowlers have me on the raw
I seem to feel it more and more
I’d like a law from a dictator
To dump them in a mountain crater
Arranging an acute eruption
That one and all might see corruption
I’d go to almost any length
Of frantic quite to evil strength
A happier human race to see
Freed from this hateful millinery

*We believe this is a reference to Viscount Halifax, who was Foreign Secretary 1938-1940. There is a picture of him wearing a bowler hat in 1938 at https://www.gettyimages.fi/detail/news-photo/foreign-secretary-viscount-halifax-greets-prime-minister-news-photo/2638930