If You Wish to Make a Stir

Tune: Arthur Sullivan's "If You're Anxious for to Shine," from "Patience"

If you wish to make a stir in the G-and-S milieu as a chap who knows his stuff,
First go burrowing through stores buying manuscripts and scores, 'til your purse cries, "Hold, enough!"
You'll make Professor Ellis preternaturally jealous, if you buy this item sight unseen—
The Iolanthe stretto, scrawled across an old libretto in the hand of Martyn Green.
And every one will say,
As you piss away your pay,
"If he can spring for something that once was worn by Ben Hashbaz,
Why, when it comes to fritterable piles of cash, what piles of cash he has!"

Be eloquent in praise of Sir Arthur's lesser lays, while you pooh-pooh Pinafore;
Try to prove The Beauty Stone is an enharmonic clone of the long-lost Thespis score.
You'll answer, if they quiz, that Haddon Hall is his, but The Mountebanks is not;
For Art stopped short at contributing support to the so-called "Lozenge Plot."
And every one will say,
As they try to stay au fait,
"If he can trace Grand Duke motifs in the theme to All That Jazz,
Why, when it comes to periods of leisure time, what leisure time he has!"

Then devote yourself to hoarding every possible recording made since Nipper was a pup,
And compare them to each other, 'til Sir Malcolm Sargent's mother wouldn't know which way was up.
All the dilettantes will cave in, in the presence of a maven—and a maven's what you'll be,
If you play 'em Martin Borman's private novelty performance of "A Maiden Fair to See."
And every one will say,
As you sit all day and bray,
"He seems to own every record from the late Danny Kaye to the late Cox-Ife;
So, if you were to ask me what he ought to get, he ought to get a life!"