“Lamps of Architecture are seven,” quoth Ruskin
As he poled his Venetian gondola;
“The orders are five, and the first one is Tuscan”,
Said Giacomo Barozzi Vignola,
Maybe Ruskin was right and Vignola was right
But now neither figure will tally;
For John hadn’t heard about fluorescent light
And Giacomo knew nothing of Lally.
(John Lally of Boston put in a few licks,
Designed a new order, and now there are six!)

The first one is Tuscan, the second is Doric
And both may he found in Despouy;
Remember those analytiques sophomoric
And those private museums in Class B?
Oh, the lovely Ionic, how truly ironic -
There’s hardly a man left alive-oh
Who can draw a volute and a cornice to boot,
As we did when the orders were five-oh
(John Lally of Boston at art took a Swipe;
He knocked her out cold with a concrete filled pipe!)

The third is Ionic, the fourth is Corinthian;
How lush the Acanthus, the Frieze -
How it often entwines in a way labyrinthian;
What modillions, what sweeping ogees!
And the effete composite, with Ionic sire,
And well-dressed Corinthian Mother,
Once brought up the van dressed in gala attire,
But John Lally added another.
(John Lally of Boston would have none of those -
He wanted a column without any clothes.)

John Lally’s sixth column was very insidious
It lurked under porches, in alleys;
It relinquished the hills to Disciples of Phidias,
Entrenched itself firmly in valleys -
With sly self-effacement it hid in each basement
And steadily worked to the top;
Amongst wealth and passion it’s now all the fashion
And Heaven knows where it will stop.
(John Lally of Boston, how things do get on!
Your thin ugly duckling turned into a swan!)

And what, pray, of Boston? of Lowell and Cabot,
And home of the bean and the cod;
And of Shepley and Coolidge and Bulfinch and Abbot,
And a week-end stop-over for God -
Did the Brahmins converse over afternoon tea
With accents exceedingly solemn;
Did they voice their dismay in their haunts in Back Bay
When they heard of this upstart sixth column?
(John Lally of Boston, he just didn’t know -
His prop knocked the props from the Old State-House Quo!)