Light verse
His first published works appeared during his military career. In 1906, he became a full-time writer, as a journalist and author of light verse, popular fiction and history, including
A Group of Scottish Women (1908).
Graham is best remembered for his series of cheerfully cruel
Ruthless Rhymes, first published in 1898 under the pseudonym Col. D. Streamer, a reference to his regiment. These were described by
The Times, in an editorial that compared him to Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll and W. S. Gilbert, as "that enchanted world where there are no values nor standards of conduct or feeling, and where the plainest sense is the plainest nonsense". The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography also compares his verse with that of W. S. Gilbert and suggests that his prose was an early influence on P. G. Wodehouse. Graham's other light verse exhibited a delight in language, and not only his native one, as in his response to the news that Wilhelm II, visiting Brussels, spoke at length with Baron de Haulleville, Director of the Congo Museum, in French, German and English: the poem began:
Guten Morgen, mon ami!Heute ist es schönes Wetter!Charmé de vous voir ici!Never saw you looking better!
Graham's pleasure in word-play is also illustrated in his poem on "Poetical Economy":
When I’ve a syllable de trop,I cut it off, without apol.:This verbal sacrifice, I know,May irritate the schol.;But all must praise my dev’lish cunn.Who realise that Time is Mon.
An example of a
Ruthless Rhyme is:
Father heard his children screamSo he threw them in the streamSaying, as he drowned the third,"Children should be seen, not heard!"
The only comprehensive anthology of Graham's verse is
When Grandmama Fell Off The Boat: The Best of Harry Graham. The latest edition was published by Sheldrake Press in 2009.
Lyricist and translator
During the war, Graham started to write lyrics for English operettas and musical comedies, including
Tina (1915),
Sybil (1916), the 1917 hit operetta
The Maid of the Mountains and
A Southern Maid (1920), and English adaptations of European operettas such as
Madame Pompadour (1923),
The Land of Smiles (1931) and many others.
His best known lyrics were "You are my heart's delight", his English version of "Dein ist mein ganzes Herz", from
The Land of Smiles, composed by Franz Lehár (and made famous by the popular tenor Richard Tauber), and "Goodbye", from his English adaptation of
The White Horse Inn (originally "Adieu, mein kleiner Gardeoffizier" from Robert Stolz's operetta
Die lustigen Weiber von Wien, a song which later achieved great popularity as sung by Josef Locke).