Some gentlemen in cloth succinct and black;
Some patronise a dog-cart, some a hack,
Some think a painted clarence only right.
Youth is not always such a pleasing sight,
Witness a man with tassels on his back;
Or woman in a great-coat like a sack
Towering above her sex with horrid height.
If all the world were water fit to drown
There are some whom you would not teach to swim,
Rather enjoying if you saw them sink;
Certain old ladies dressed in girlish pink,
With roses and geraniums on their gown: —
Go to the Bason, poke them o'er the rim. —
Note the rhyme scheme in the last six lines, where the reader’s expectations are upset in that ‘rim’ rhymes with ‘swim’ five lines earlier, rather than in a rhyming couplet. This has an unsettling effect. 
 There is a resolution in the single line that sums up the whole poem. The ‘Basin’ is capitalised, giving ironic and humorous weight to this universal washing-up bowl. The final ‘poke them o'er the rim’ is colloquial and cruel, horrifying social cleansing  — yet funny.
Some ladies dress in muslin full and white