Beware!

This piece is based on a text by Australian poet C. J. Dennis (1876-1938) from his book of poems, The Glugs of Gosh. Written for The Australian Boys Choir, it is a quick-singing high-intensity piece for a cappella voices. The text is as follows:

Beware this injurious, furious brute;
    He’s ready to rend you with tooth and with claw.
Though ’tis incredible,
Anything edible
    Disappears suddenly into his maw;
Into his cavernous inner interior
Vanishes ev’rything strictly superior.

I’ve watched this abdominous, ominous shape
    Abroad in the land while the nation has slept,
Marked his satanical
Methods tyrannical;
    Rigorous, vigorous vigil I kept.
Good gracious, voracious is hardly the name for it!
Yet we have only our blindness to blame for it.

My dear, I’ve autoptical optical proof
    That he’s prowling and growling at large in the land.
Hear his pestiferous
Clamour vociferous
    Gurgles and groans of the beastliest brand.
Some may regard his contortions as comical.
But I’ve the proof that his game’s gastronomical.