(verse 1) When Mendel’s brilliant garden charts were finally unrolled, And all the laws of dominant traits to modern science told, Lord Reginald let out a cheer and shouted, "Now I see! The secret of the dimpled cheek, the wrinkled, wretched pea!" For Reginald was quite obsessed, a victim of his past, Who hoped that genetic science might avenge his wrongs at last. (verse 2) You see, when Reggie was a boy, his Auntie Gwendolyn, Would swoop upon him like a hawk and seize him by the chin. "Oh, what a lovely DIMPLED face!" she’d bellow with delight, And pinch his cheeks with giant hands with all her awful might. He grew to loathe the very word, the cratered, wrinkled space, And swore he'd banish every dent from every human face. (verse 3) The trauma grew below the stairs, a most upsetting sight, Where weeping scullery maids would sort the harvest every night. He’d watch the sobbing Mary Jane, her tears a steady stream, Who split the peas for serving trays beneath a lantern’s gleam. "The smooth are for the Family!" the Cook would loudly roar, "The dimpled, wrinkled, ugly ones go through the servants' door!" (verse 4) At eight o'clock the dinner bell would sound a martial blare, And footmen marched in regiments behind each dining chair. The giant silver tureens tipped, discharging in a flood, A flawless mount of perfect peas, the pride of noble blood. And then the fragrant bread sauce poured, a creamy, heavy tide, Where not a single dimpled pea could ever hope to hide. (verse 5) So now he sits with Mendel’s squares, with pencil and a book, To breed the perfect, smoothest pea for his demanding Cook. He tracks recessive phenotypes and mutters as he sows, And cross-pollinates his garden in a thousand little rows. He hopes to breed the dimples out, a triumph of his art, And heal the wrinkled trauma in his smooth, un-dimpled heart! (verse 6) But when the moon is swallowed by a creeping, gothic gloom, A most unnatural terror fills Lord Reginald's cold room. He tosses in his four-poster, plagued by horrific dreams Of giant, dimpled, mutant peas that split the velvet seams! They bear the face of Gwendolyn, they pinch his sweating chin, As Reginald wakes shrieking at the horrors locked within. (verse 7) Yet miles away, Charles Darwin paced beneath a heavy dread, With thoughts of Wedgwood porcelain, and a mother early dead. If only he had seen the charts that Mendel carefully drew, Would he have wed his cousin if the recessive risks he knew? Or would he scoff at friars, and dismiss the mystic monk, And toss the mathematics in his old mahogany trunk? (verse 8) He weighed the heavy silver 'gainst the Wedgwood's fragile pots, While wrestling with inheritance and tangled, anxious knots. When suddenly, a chilling draft swept through the vaulted hall, And there—a spectral, cowled figure glided by the wall! The ghost of Gregor Mendel, holding charts of wrinkled seeds, Arrived to haunt the scientist about his cousin-breeds. (verse 9) The phantom drifted closer through the high and shadowed gloom, Just as a frightful racket echoed from the drawing-room. Young Ralph Vaughan Williams banged a drum, a dreadful, happy din, And Charles, unstrung and terrified by the phantom looking in, Bellowed at his grand-nephew, his whiskers turning white: "Cease that infernal racket, Ralph! I've seen a ghost tonight!"
