The Beginner - The Muse Among the Motors - Rudyard Kipling

This is for a friend of ours, who just repaired a fancy car for a client who promptly managed to tear the new trimming off by driving too close to a wall...

The title is The Beginner. It is one of several auto-related parodies written by Rudyard Kipling.

LO! What is this that I make—sudden, supreme, unrehearsed—
This that my clutch in the crowd pressed at a venture has raised?
Forward and onward I sprang when I thought (as I ought) I reversed,
And a cab like martagon opes and I sit in the wreckage dazed.

And someone is taking my name, and the driver is rending the air
With cries for my blood and my gold, and a snickering news-boy brings
My cap, wheel-pashed from the kerb. I must run her home for repair,
Where she leers with her bonnet awry—flat on the nether springs!

For more on Rudyard Kipling, including information on his adventures with early automobiles, see http://www.solarnavigator.net/history/rudyard_kipling.htm.