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diff --git a/old/50bab10h.htm b/old/50bab10h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7f530cb --- /dev/null +++ b/old/50bab10h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5920 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII"> +<title>Fifty Bab Ballads</title> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">Fifty Bab Ballads, by William S. Gilbert</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Fifty Bab Ballads, by William S. Gilbert + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Fifty Bab Ballads + +Author: William S. Gilbert + +Release Date: December, 1996 [EBook #757] +[This file was first posted on December 26, 1996] +[Most recently updated: September 8, 2002] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII +</pre> +<p> +<a name="startoftext"></a> +Transcribed from the 1884 and 1891 George Routledge and Sons editions +by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +FIFTY “BAB” BALLADS - MUCH SOUND AND LITTLE SENSE<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +PREFACE.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +The “BAB BALLADS” appeared originally in the columns of +“FUN,” when that periodical was under the editorship of +the late TOM HOOD. They were subsequently republished in two volumes, +one called “THE BAB BALLADS,” the other “MORE BAB +BALLADS.” The period during which they were written extended +over some three or four years; many, however, were composed hastily, +and under the discomforting necessity of having to turn out a quantity +of lively verse by a certain day in every week. As it seemed to +me (and to others) that the volumes were disfigured by the presence +of these hastily written impostors, I thought it better to withdraw +from both volumes such Ballads as seemed to show evidence of carelessness +or undue haste, and to publish the remainder in the compact form under +which they are now presented to the reader.<br> +<br> +It may interest some to know that the first of the series, “The +Yarn of the <i>Nancy Bell</i>,” was originally offered to “PUNCH,” +- to which I was, at that time, an occasional contributor. It +was, however, declined by the then Editor, on the ground that it was +“too cannibalistic for his readers’ tastes.”<br> +<br> +W. S. GILBERT.<br> +<br> +24 <i>The Boltons, South Kensington</i>,<br> +<i>August</i>, 1876<i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +</i>Ballad: CAPTAIN REECE.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Of all the ships upon the blue,<br> +No ship contained a better crew<br> +Than that of worthy CAPTAIN REECE,<br> +Commanding of <i>The Mantelpiece</i>.<br> +<br> +He was adored by all his men,<br> +For worthy CAPTAIN REECE, R.N.,<br> +Did all that lay within him to<br> +Promote the comfort of his crew.<br> +<br> +If ever they were dull or sad,<br> +Their captain danced to them like mad,<br> +Or told, to make the time pass by,<br> +Droll legends of his infancy.<br> +<br> +A feather bed had every man,<br> +Warm slippers and hot-water can,<br> +Brown windsor from the captain’s store,<br> +A valet, too, to every four.<br> +<br> +Did they with thirst in summer burn,<br> +Lo, seltzogenes at every turn,<br> +And on all very sultry days<br> +Cream ices handed round on trays.<br> +<br> +Then currant wine and ginger pops<br> +Stood handily on all the “tops;”<br> +And also, with amusement rife,<br> +A “Zoetrope, or Wheel of Life.”<br> +<br> +New volumes came across the sea<br> +From MISTER MUDIE’S libraree;<br> +<i>The Times</i> and<i> Saturday Review<br> +</i>Beguiled the leisure of the crew.<br> +<br> +Kind-hearted CAPTAIN REECE, R.N.,<br> +Was quite devoted to his men;<br> +In point of fact, good CAPTAIN REECE<br> +Beatified <i>The Mantelpiece.<br> +<br> +</i>One summer eve, at half-past ten,<br> +He said (addressing all his men):<br> +“Come, tell me, please, what I can do<br> +To please and gratify my crew.<br> +<br> +“By any reasonable plan<br> +I’ll make you happy if I can;<br> +My own convenience count as <i>nil</i>:<br> +It is my duty, and I will.”<br> +<br> +Then up and answered WILLIAM LEE<br> +(The kindly captain’s coxswain he,<br> +A nervous, shy, low-spoken man),<br> +He cleared his throat and thus began:<br> +<br> +“You have a daughter, CAPTAIN REECE,<br> +Ten female cousins and a niece,<br> +A Ma, if what I’m told is true,<br> +Six sisters, and an aunt or two.<br> +<br> +“Now, somehow, sir, it seems to me,<br> +More friendly-like we all should be,<br> +If you united of ’em to<br> +Unmarried members of the crew.<br> +<br> +“If you’d ameliorate our life,<br> +Let each select from them a wife;<br> +And as for nervous me, old pal,<br> +Give me your own enchanting gal!”<br> +<br> +Good CAPTAIN REECE, that worthy man,<br> +Debated on his coxswain’s plan:<br> +“I quite agree,” he said, “O BILL;<br> +It is my duty, and I will.<br> +<br> +“My daughter, that enchanting gurl,<br> +Has just been promised to an Earl,<br> +And all my other familee<br> +To peers of various degree.<br> +<br> +“But what are dukes and viscounts to<br> +The happiness of all my crew?<br> +The word I gave you I’ll fulfil;<br> +It is my duty, and I will.<br> +<br> +“As you desire it shall befall,<br> +I’ll settle thousands on you all,<br> +And I shall be, despite my hoard,<br> +The only bachelor on board.”<br> +<br> +The boatswain of <i>The Mantelpiece,<br> +</i>He blushed and spoke to CAPTAIN REECE:<br> +“I beg your honour’s leave,” he said;<br> +“If you would wish to go and wed,<br> +<br> +“I have a widowed mother who<br> +Would be the very thing for you -<br> +She long has loved you from afar:<br> +She washes for you, CAPTAIN R.”<br> +<br> +The Captain saw the dame that day -<br> +Addressed her in his playful way -<br> +“And did it want a wedding ring?<br> +It was a tempting ickle sing!<br> +<br> +“Well, well, the chaplain I will seek,<br> +We’ll all be married this day week<br> +At yonder church upon the hill;<br> +It is my duty, and I will!”<br> +<br> +The sisters, cousins, aunts, and niece,<br> +And widowed Ma of CAPTAIN REECE,<br> +Attended there as they were bid;<br> +It was their duty, and they did.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: THE RIVAL CURATES.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +List while the poet trolls<br> +Of MR. CLAYTON HOOPER,<br> +Who had a cure of souls<br> +At Spiffton-extra-Sooper.<br> +<br> +He lived on curds and whey,<br> +And daily sang their praises,<br> +And then he’d go and play<br> +With buttercups and daisies.<br> +<br> +Wild croquêt HOOPER banned,<br> +And all the sports of Mammon,<br> +He warred with cribbage, and<br> +He exorcised backgammon.<br> +<br> +His helmet was a glance<br> +That spoke of holy gladness;<br> +A saintly smile his lance;<br> +His shield a tear of sadness.<br> +<br> +His Vicar smiled to see<br> +This armour on him buckled:<br> +With pardonable glee<br> +He blessed himself and chuckled.<br> +<br> +“In mildness to abound<br> +My curate’s sole design is;<br> +In all the country round<br> +There’s none so mild as mine is!”<br> +<br> +And HOOPER, disinclined<br> +His trumpet to be blowing,<br> +Yet didn’t think you’d find<br> +A milder curate going.<br> +<br> +A friend arrived one day<br> +At Spiffton-extra-Sooper,<br> +And in this shameful way<br> +He spoke to Mr. HOOPER:<br> +<br> +“You think your famous name<br> +For mildness can’t be shaken,<br> +That none can blot your fame -<br> +But, HOOPER, you’re mistaken!<br> +<br> +“Your mind is not as blank<br> +As that of HOPLEY PORTER,<br> +Who holds a curate’s rank<br> +At Assesmilk-cum-Worter.<br> +<br> +“<i>He</i> plays the airy flute,<br> +And looks depressed and blighted,<br> +Doves round about him ‘toot,’<br> +And lambkins dance delighted.<br> +<br> +“<i>He</i> labours more than you<br> +At worsted work, and frames it;<br> +In old maids’ albums, too,<br> +Sticks seaweed - yes, and names it!”<br> +<br> +The tempter said his say,<br> +Which pierced him like a needle -<br> +He summoned straight away<br> +His sexton and his beadle.<br> +<br> +(These men were men who could<br> +Hold liberal opinions:<br> +On Sundays they were good -<br> +On week-days they were minions.)<br> +<br> +“To HOPLEY PORTER go,<br> +Your fare I will afford you -<br> + Deal him a deadly blow,<br> +And blessings shall reward you.<br> +<br> +“But stay - I do not like<br> +Undue assassination,<br> +And so before you strike,<br> +Make this communication:<br> +<br> +“I’ll give him this one chance -<br> +If he’ll more gaily bear him,<br> +Play croquêt, smoke, and dance,<br> +I willingly will spare him.”<br> +<br> +They went, those minions true,<br> +To Assesmilk-cum-Worter,<br> +And told their errand to<br> +The REVEREND HOPLEY PORTER.<br> +<br> +“What?” said that reverend gent,<br> +“Dance through my hours of leisure?<br> +Smoke? - bathe myself with scent? -<br> +Play croquêt? Oh, with pleasure!<br> +<br> +“Wear all my hair in curl?<br> +Stand at my door and wink - so -<br> +At every passing girl?<br> +My brothers, I should think so!<br> +<br> +“For years I’ve longed for some<br> +Excuse for this revulsion:<br> +Now that excuse has come -<br> +I do it on compulsion!!!”<br> +<br> +He smoked and winked away -<br> +This REVEREND HOPLEY PORTER -<br> +The deuce there was to pay<br> +At Assesmilk-cum-Worter.<br> +<br> +And HOOPER holds his ground,<br> +In mildness daily growing -<br> +They think him, all around,<br> +The mildest curate going.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: ONLY A DANCING GIRL.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Only a dancing girl,<br> +With an unromantic style,<br> +With borrowed colour and curl,<br> +With fixed mechanical smile,<br> +With many a hackneyed wile,<br> +With ungrammatical lips,<br> +And corns that mar her trips.<br> +<br> +Hung from the “flies” in air,<br> +She acts a palpable lie,<br> +She’s as little a fairy there<br> +As unpoetical I!<br> +I hear you asking, Why -<br> +Why in the world I sing<br> +This tawdry, tinselled thing?<br> +<br> +No airy fairy she,<br> +As she hangs in arsenic green<br> +From a highly impossible tree<br> +In a highly impossible scene<br> +(Herself not over-clean).<br> +For fays don’t suffer, I’m told,<br> +From bunions, coughs, or cold.<br> +<br> +And stately dames that bring<br> +Their daughters there to see,<br> +Pronounce the “dancing thing”<br> +No better than she should be,<br> +With her skirt at her shameful knee,<br> +And her painted, tainted phiz:<br> +Ah, matron, which of us is?<br> +<br> +(And, in sooth, it oft occurs<br> +That while these matrons sigh,<br> +Their dresses are lower than hers,<br> +And sometimes half as high;<br> +And their hair is hair they buy,<br> +And they use their glasses, too,<br> +In a way she’d blush to do.)<br> +<br> +But change her gold and green<br> +For a coarse merino gown,<br> +And see her upon the scene<br> +Of her home, when coaxing down<br> +Her drunken father’s frown,<br> +In his squalid cheerless den:<br> +She’s a fairy truly, then!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: TO A LITTLE MAID - BY A POLICEMAN.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Come with me, little maid,<br> +Nay, shrink not, thus afraid -<br> +I’ll harm thee not!<br> +Fly not, my love, from me -<br> +I have a home for thee -<br> +A fairy grot,<br> +Where mortal eye<br> +Can rarely pry,<br> +There shall thy dwelling be!<br> +<br> +List to me, while I tell<br> +The pleasures of that cell,<br> +Oh, little maid!<br> +What though its couch be rude,<br> +Homely the only food<br> +Within its shade?<br> +No thought of care<br> +Can enter there,<br> +No vulgar swain intrude!<br> +<br> +Come with me, little maid,<br> +Come to the rocky shade<br> +I love to sing;<br> +Live with us, maiden rare -<br> +Come, for we “want” thee there,<br> +Thou elfin thing,<br> +To work thy spell,<br> +In some cool cell<br> +In stately Pentonville!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: THE TROUBADOUR.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A troubadour he played<br> +Without a castle wall,<br> +Within, a hapless maid<br> +Responded to his call.<br> +<br> +“Oh, willow, woe is me!<br> +Alack and well-a-day!<br> +If I were only free<br> +I’d hie me far away!”<br> +<br> +Unknown her face and name,<br> +But this he knew right well,<br> +The maiden’s wailing came<br> +From out a dungeon cell.<br> +<br> +A hapless woman lay<br> +Within that dungeon grim -<br> +That fact, I’ve heard him say,<br> +Was quite enough for him.<br> +<br> +“I will not sit or lie,<br> +Or eat or drink, I vow,<br> +Till thou art free as I,<br> +Or I as pent as thou.”<br> +<br> +Her tears then ceased to flow,<br> +Her wails no longer rang,<br> +And tuneful in her woe<br> +The prisoned maiden sang:<br> +<br> +“Oh, stranger, as you play,<br> +I recognize your touch;<br> +And all that I can say<br> +Is, thank you very much.”<br> +<br> +He seized his clarion straight,<br> +And blew thereat, until<br> +A warden oped the gate.<br> +“Oh, what might be your will?”<br> +<br> +“I’ve come, Sir Knave, to see<br> +The master of these halls:<br> +A maid unwillingly<br> +Lies prisoned in their walls.”’<br> +<br> +With barely stifled sigh<br> +That porter drooped his head,<br> +With teardrops in his eye,<br> +“A many, sir,” he said.<br> +<br> +He stayed to hear no more,<br> +But pushed that porter by,<br> +And shortly stood before<br> +SIR HUGH DE PECKHAM RYE.<br> +<br> +SIR HUGH he darkly frowned,<br> +“What would you, sir, with me?”<br> +The troubadour he downed<br> +Upon his bended knee.<br> +<br> +“I’ve come, DE PECKHAM RYE,<br> +To do a Christian task;<br> +You ask me what would I?<br> +It is not much I ask.<br> +<br> +“Release these maidens, sir,<br> +Whom you dominion o’er -<br> +Particularly her<br> +Upon the second floor.<br> +<br> +“And if you don’t, my lord” -<br> +He here stood bolt upright,<br> +And tapped a tailor’s sword -<br> +“Come out, you cad, and fight!”<br> +<br> +SIR HUGH he called - and ran<br> +The warden from the gate:<br> +“Go, show this gentleman<br> +The maid in Forty-eight.”<br> +<br> +By many a cell they past,<br> +And stopped at length before<br> +A portal, bolted fast:<br> +The man unlocked the door.<br> +<br> +He called inside the gate<br> +With coarse and brutal shout,<br> +“Come, step it, Forty-eight!”<br> +And Forty-eight stepped out.<br> +<br> +“They gets it pretty hot,<br> +The maidens what we cotch -<br> +Two years this lady’s got<br> +For collaring a wotch.”<br> +<br> +“Oh, ah! - indeed - I see,”<br> +The troubadour exclaimed -<br> +“If I may make so free,<br> +How is this castle named?<br> +<br> +The warden’s eyelids fill,<br> +And sighing, he replied,<br> +“Of gloomy Pentonville<br> +This is the female side!”<br> +<br> +The minstrel did not wait<br> +The Warden stout to thank,<br> +But recollected straight<br> +He’d business at the Bank.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: FERDINANDO AND ELVIRA; OR, THE GENTLE PIEMAN.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +PART I.<br> +<br> +<br> +At a pleasant evening party I had taken down to supper<br> +One whom I will call ELVIRA, and we talked of love and TUPPER,<br> +<br> +MR. TUPPER and the Poets, very lightly with them dealing,<br> +For I’ve always been distinguished for a strong poetic feeling.<br> +<br> +Then we let off paper crackers, each of which contained a motto,<br> +And she listened while I read them, till her mother told her not to.<br> +<br> +Then she whispered, “To the ball-room we had better, dear, be +walking;<br> +If we stop down here much longer, really people will be talking.”<br> +<br> +There were noblemen in coronets, and military cousins,<br> +There were captains by the hundred, there were baronets by dozens.<br> +<br> +Yet she heeded not their offers, but dismissed them with a blessing,<br> +Then she let down all her back hair, which had taken long in dressing.<br> +<br> +Then she had convulsive sobbings in her agitated throttle,<br> +Then she wiped her pretty eyes and smelt her pretty smelling-bottle.<br> +<br> +So I whispered, “Dear ELVIRA, say, - what can the matter +be with you?<br> +Does anything you’ve eaten, darling POPSY, disagree with you?”<br> +<br> +But spite of all I said, her sobs grew more and more distressing,<br> +And she tore her pretty back hair, which had taken long in dressing.<br> +<br> +Then she gazed upon the carpet, at the ceiling, then above me,<br> +And she whispered, “FERDINANDO, do you really, <i>really</i> love +me?”<br> +<br> +“Love you?” said I, then I sighed, and then I gazed upon +her sweetly -<br> +For I think I do this sort of thing particularly neatly.<br> +<br> +“Send me to the Arctic regions, or illimitable azure,<br> +On a scientific goose-chase, with my COXWELL or my GLAISHER!<br> +<br> +“Tell me whither I may hie me - tell me, dear one, that I may +know -<br> +Is it up the highest Andes? down a horrible volcano?”<br> +<br> +But she said, “It isn’t polar bears, or hot volcanic grottoes:<br> +Only find out who it is that writes those lovely cracker mottoes!”<br> +<br> +<br> +PART II.<br> +<br> +<br> +“Tell me, HENRY WADSWORTH, ALFRED POET CLOSE, or MISTER TUPPER,<br> +Do you write the bon bon mottoes my ELVIRA pulls at supper?”<br> +<br> +But HENRY WADSWORTH smiled, and said he had not had that honour;<br> +And ALFRED, too, disclaimed the words that told so much upon her.<br> +<br> +“MISTER MARTIN TUPPER, POET CLOSE, I beg of you inform us;”<br> +But my question seemed to throw them both into a rage enormous.<br> +<br> +MISTER CLOSE expressed a wish that he could only get anigh to me;<br> +And MISTER MARTIN TUPPER sent the following reply to me:<br> +<br> +“A fool is bent upon a twig, but wise men dread a bandit,” +-<br> +Which I know was very clever; but I didn’t understand it.<br> +<br> +Seven weary years I wandered - Patagonia, China, Norway,<br> +Till at last I sank exhausted at a pastrycook his doorway.<br> +<br> +There were fuchsias and geraniums, and daffodils and myrtle,<br> +So I entered, and I ordered half a basin of mock turtle.<br> +<br> +He was plump and he was chubby, he was smooth and he was rosy,<br> +And his little wife was pretty and particularly cosy.<br> +<br> +And he chirped and sang, and skipped about, and laughed with laughter +hearty -<br> +He was wonderfully active for so very stout a party.<br> +<br> +And I said, “O gentle pieman, why so very, very merry?<br> +Is it purity of conscience, or your one-and-seven sherry?”<br> +<br> +But he answered, “I’m so happy - no profession could be +dearer -<br> +If I am not humming ‘Tra! la! la!’ I’m singing ‘Tirer, +lirer!’<br> +<br> +“First I go and make the patties, and the puddings, and the jellies,<br> +Then I make a sugar bird-cage, which upon a table swell is;<br> +<br> +“Then I polish all the silver, which a supper-table lacquers;<br> +Then I write the pretty mottoes which you find inside the crackers.” +-<br> +<br> +“Found at last!” I madly shouted. “Gentle pieman, +you astound me!”<br> +Then I waved the turtle soup enthusiastically round me.<br> +<br> +And I shouted and I danced until he’d quite a crowd around him +-<br> +And I rushed away exclaiming, “I have found him! I have +found him!”<br> +<br> +And I heard the gentle pieman in the road behind me trilling,<br> +“‘Tira, lira!’ stop him, stop him! ‘Tra! +la! la!’ the soup’s a shilling!”<br> +<br> +But until I reached ELVIRA’S home, I never, never waited,<br> +And ELVIRA to her FERDINAND’S irrevocably mated!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: TO MY BRIDE - (WHOEVER SHE MAY BE.)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Oh! little maid! - (I do not know your name<br> +Or who you are, so, as a safe precaution<br> +I’ll add) - Oh, buxom widow! married dame!<br> +(As one of these must be your present portion)<br> +Listen, while I unveil prophetic lore for you,<br> +And sing the fate that Fortune has in store for you.<br> +<br> +You’ll marry soon - within a year or twain -<br> +A bachelor of <i>circa</i> two and thirty:<br> +Tall, gentlemanly, but extremely plain,<br> +And when you’re intimate, you’ll call him “BERTIE.”<br> +Neat - dresses well; his temper has been classified<br> +As hasty; but he’s very quickly pacified.<br> +<br> +You’ll find him working mildly at the Bar,<br> +After a touch at two or three professions,<br> +From easy affluence extremely far,<br> +A brief or two on Circuit - “soup” at Sessions;<br> +A pound or two from whist and backing horses,<br> +And, say three hundred from his own resources.<br> +<br> +Quiet in harness; free from serious vice,<br> +His faults are not particularly shady,<br> +You’ll never find him “<i>shy</i>” - for, once or +twice<br> +Already, he’s been driven by a lady,<br> +Who parts with him - perhaps a poor excuse for him -<br> +Because she hasn’t any further use for him.<br> +<br> +Oh! bride of mine - tall, dumpy, dark, or fair!<br> +Oh! widow - wife, maybe, or blushing maiden,<br> +I’ve told <i>your</i> fortune; solved the gravest care<br> +With which your mind has hitherto been laden.<br> +I’ve prophesied correctly, never doubt it;<br> +Now tell me mine - and please be quick about it!<br> +<br> +You - only you - can tell me, an’ you will,<br> +To whom I’m destined shortly to be mated,<br> +Will she run up a heavy <i>modiste’s</i> bill?<br> +If so, I want to hear her income stated<br> +(This is a point which interests me greatly).<br> +To quote the bard, “Oh! have I seen her lately?”<br> +<br> +Say, must I wait till husband number one<br> +Is comfortably stowed away at Woking?<br> +How is her hair most usually done?<br> +And tell me, please, will she object to smoking?<br> +The colour of her eyes, too, you may mention:<br> +Come, Sibyl, prophesy - I’m all attention.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: SIR MACKLIN.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Of all the youths I ever saw<br> +None were so wicked, vain, or silly,<br> +So lost to shame and Sabbath law,<br> +As worldly TOM, and BOB, and BILLY.<br> +<br> +For every Sabbath day they walked<br> +(Such was their gay and thoughtless natur)<br> +In parks or gardens, where they talked<br> +From three to six, or even later.<br> +<br> +SIR MACKLIN was a priest severe<br> +In conduct and in conversation,<br> +It did a sinner good to hear<br> +Him deal in ratiocination.<br> +<br> +He could in every action show<br> +Some sin, and nobody could doubt him.<br> +He argued high, he argued low,<br> +He also argued round about him.<br> +<br> +He wept to think each thoughtless youth<br> +Contained of wickedness a skinful,<br> +And burnt to teach the awful truth,<br> +That walking out on Sunday’s sinful.<br> +<br> +“Oh, youths,” said he, “I grieve to find<br> +The course of life you’ve been and hit on -<br> +Sit down,” said he, “and never mind<br> +The pennies for the chairs you sit on.<br> +<br> +“My opening head is ‘Kensington,’<br> +How walking there the sinner hardens,<br> +Which when I have enlarged upon,<br> +I go to ‘Secondly’ - its ‘Gardens.’<br> +<br> +“My ‘Thirdly’ comprehendeth ‘Hyde,’<br> +Of Secresy the guilts and shameses;<br> +My ‘Fourthly’ - ‘Park’ - its verdure wide -<br> +My ‘Fifthly’ comprehends ‘St. James’s.’<br> +<br> +“That matter settled, I shall reach<br> +The ‘Sixthly’ in my solemn tether,<br> +And show that what is true of each,<br> +Is also true of all, together.<br> +<br> +“Then I shall demonstrate to you,<br> +According to the rules of WHATELY,<br> +That what is true of all, is true<br> +Of each, considered separately.”<br> +<br> +In lavish stream his accents flow,<br> +TOM, BOB, and BILLY dare not flout him;<br> +He argued high, he argued low,<br> +He also argued round about him.<br> +<br> +“Ha, ha!” he said, “you loathe your ways,<br> +You writhe at these my words of warning,<br> +In agony your hands you raise.”<br> +(And so they did, for they were yawning.)<br> +<br> +To “Twenty-firstly” on they go,<br> +The lads do not attempt to scout him;<br> +He argued high, he argued low,<br> +He also argued round about him.<br> +<br> +“Ho, ho!” he cries, “you bow your crests -<br> +My eloquence has set you weeping;<br> +In shame you bend upon your breasts!”<br> +(And so they did, for they were sleeping.)<br> +<br> +He proved them this - he proved them that -<br> +This good but wearisome ascetic;<br> +He jumped and thumped upon his hat,<br> +He was so very energetic.<br> +<br> +His Bishop at this moment chanced<br> +To pass, and found the road encumbered;<br> +He noticed how the Churchman danced,<br> +And how his congregation slumbered.<br> +<br> +The hundred and eleventh head<br> +The priest completed of his stricture;<br> +“Oh, bosh!” the worthy Bishop said,<br> +And walked him off as in the picture.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: THE YARN OF THE “NANCY BELL.” <a name="citation1"></a><a href="#footnote1">{1}</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +’Twas on the shores that round our coast<br> +From Deal to Ramsgate span,<br> +That I found alone on a piece of stone<br> +An elderly naval man.<br> +<br> +His hair was weedy, his beard was long,<br> +And weedy and long was he,<br> +And I heard this wight on the shore recite,<br> +In a singular minor key:<br> +<br> +“Oh, I am a cook and a captain bold,<br> +And the mate of the <i>Nancy</i> brig,<br> +And a bo’sun tight, and a midshipmite,<br> +And the crew of the captain’s gig.”<br> +<br> +And he shook his fists and he tore his hair,<br> +Till I really felt afraid,<br> +For I couldn’t help thinking the man had been drinking,<br> +And so I simply said:<br> +<br> +“Oh, elderly man, it’s little I know<br> +Of the duties of men of the sea,<br> +And I’ll eat my hand if I understand<br> +However you can be<br> +<br> +“At once a cook, and a captain bold,<br> +And the mate of the <i>Nancy</i> brig,<br> +And a bo’sun tight, and a midshipmite,<br> +And the crew of the captain’s gig.”<br> +<br> +Then he gave a hitch to his trousers, which<br> +Is a trick all seamen larn,<br> +And having got rid of a thumping quid,<br> +He spun this painful yarn:<br> +<br> +“’Twas in the good ship <i>Nancy Bell<br> +</i>That we sailed to the Indian Sea,<br> +And there on a reef we come to grief,<br> +Which has often occurred to me.<br> +<br> +“And pretty nigh all the crew was drowned<br> +(There was seventy-seven o’ soul),<br> +And only ten of the <i>Nancy’s</i> men<br> +Said ‘Here!’ to the muster-roll.<br> +<br> +“There was me and the cook and the captain bold,<br> +And the mate of the <i>Nancy</i> brig,<br> +And the bo’sun tight, and a midshipmite,<br> +And the crew of the captain’s gig.<br> +<br> +“For a month we’d neither wittles nor drink,<br> +Till a-hungry we did feel,<br> +So we drawed a lot, and, accordin’ shot<br> +The captain for our meal.<br> +<br> +“The next lot fell to the <i>Nancy’s</i> mate,<br> +And a delicate dish he made;<br> +Then our appetite with the midshipmite<br> +We seven survivors stayed.<br> +<br> +“And then we murdered the bo’sun tight,<br> +And he much resembled pig;<br> +Then we wittled free, did the cook and me,<br> +On the crew of the captain’s gig.<br> +<br> +“Then only the cook and me was left,<br> +And the delicate question, ‘Which<br> +Of us two goes to the kettle?’ arose,<br> +And we argued it out as sich.<br> +<br> +“For I loved that cook as a brother, I did,<br> +And the cook he worshipped me;<br> +But we’d both be blowed if we’d either be stowed<br> +In the other chap’s hold, you see.<br> +<br> +“‘I’ll be eat if you dines off me,’ says TOM;<br> +‘Yes, that,’ says I, ‘you’ll be, -<br> +‘I’m boiled if I die, my friend,’ quoth I;<br> +And ‘Exactly so,’ quoth he.<br> +<br> +“Says he, ‘Dear JAMES, to murder me<br> +Were a foolish thing to do,<br> +For don’t you see that you can’t cook <i>me</i>,<br> +While I can - and will - cook <i>you</i>!’<br> +<br> +“So he boils the water, and takes the salt<br> +And the pepper in portions true<br> +(Which he never forgot), and some chopped shalot.<br> +And some sage and parsley too.<br> +<br> +“‘Come here,’ says he, with a proper pride,<br> +Which his smiling features tell,<br> +‘’T will soothing be if I let you see<br> +How extremely nice you’ll smell.’<br> +<br> +“And he stirred it round and round and round,<br> +And he sniffed at the foaming froth;<br> +When I ups with his heels, and smothers his squeals<br> +In the scum of the boiling broth.<br> +<br> +“And I eat that cook in a week or less,<br> +And - as I eating be<br> +The last of his chops, why, I almost drops,<br> +For a wessel in sight I see!<br> +<br> +* * * *<br> +<br> +“And I never larf, and I never smile,<br> +And I never lark nor play,<br> +But sit and croak, and a single joke<br> +I have - which is to say:<br> +<br> +“Oh, I am a cook and a captain bold,<br> +And the mate of the <i>Nancy</i> brig,<br> +And a bo’sun tight, and a midshipmite,<br> +And the crew of the captain’s gig!’”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: THE BISHOP OF RUM-TI-FOO.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +From east and south the holy clan<br> +Of Bishops gathered to a man;<br> +To Synod, called Pan-Anglican,<br> +In flocking crowds they came.<br> +Among them was a Bishop, who<br> +Had lately been appointed to<br> +The balmy isle of Rum-ti-Foo,<br> +And PETER was his name.<br> +<br> +His people - twenty-three in sum -<br> +They played the eloquent tum-tum,<br> +And lived on scalps served up, in rum -<br> +The only sauce they knew.<br> +When first good BISHOP PETER came<br> +(For PETER was that Bishop’s name),<br> +To humour them, he did the same<br> +As they of Rum-ti-Foo.<br> +<br> +His flock, I’ve often heard him tell,<br> +(His name was PETER) loved him well,<br> +And, summoned by the sound of bell,<br> +In crowds together came.<br> +“Oh, massa, why you go away?<br> +Oh, MASSA PETER, please to stay.”<br> +(They called him PETER, people say,<br> +Because it was his name.)<br> +<br> +He told them all good boys to be,<br> +And sailed away across the sea,<br> +At London Bridge that Bishop he<br> +Arrived one Tuesday night;<br> +And as that night he homeward strode<br> +To his Pan-Anglican abode,<br> +He passed along the Borough Road,<br> +And saw a gruesome sight.<br> +<br> +He saw a crowd assembled round<br> +A person dancing on the ground,<br> +Who straight began to leap and bound<br> +With all his might and main.<br> +To see that dancing man he stopped,<br> +Who twirled and wriggled, skipped and hopped,<br> +Then down incontinently dropped,<br> +And then sprang up again.<br> +<br> +The Bishop chuckled at the sight.<br> +“This style of dancing would delight<br> +A simple Rum-ti-Foozleite.<br> +I’ll learn it if I can,<br> +To please the tribe when I get back.”<br> +He begged the man to teach his knack.<br> +“Right Reverend Sir, in half a crack!<br> +Replied that dancing man.<br> +<br> +The dancing man he worked away,<br> +And taught the Bishop every day -<br> +The dancer skipped like any fay -<br> +Good PETER did the same.<br> +The Bishop buckled to his task,<br> +With <i>battements</i>, and <i>pas de basque.<br> +</i>(I’ll tell you, if you care to ask,<br> +That PETER was his name.)<br> +<br> +“Come, walk like this,” the dancer said,<br> +“Stick out your toes - stick in your head,<br> +Stalk on with quick, galvanic tread -<br> +Your fingers thus extend;<br> +The attitude’s considered quaint.”<br> +The weary Bishop, feeling faint,<br> +Replied, “I do not say it ain’t,<br> +But ‘Time!’ my Christian friend!”<br> +<br> +“We now proceed to something new -<br> +Dance as the PAYNES and LAURIS do,<br> +Like this - one, two - one, two - one, two.”<br> +The Bishop, never proud,<br> +But in an overwhelming heat<br> +(His name was PETER, I repeat)<br> +Performed the PAYNE and LAURI feat,<br> +And puffed his thanks aloud.<br> +<br> +Another game the dancer planned -<br> +“Just take your ankle in your hand,<br> +And try, my lord, if you can stand -<br> +Your body stiff and stark.<br> +If, when revisiting your see,<br> +You learnt to hop on shore - like me -<br> +The novelty would striking be,<br> +And must attract remark.”<br> +<br> +“No,” said the worthy Bishop, “no;<br> +That is a length to which, I trow,<br> +Colonial Bishops cannot go.<br> +You may express surprise<br> +At finding Bishops deal in pride -<br> +But if that trick I ever tried,<br> +I should appear undignified<br> +In Rum-ti-Foozle’s eyes.<br> +<br> +“The islanders of Rum-ti-Foo<br> +Are well-conducted persons, who<br> +Approve a joke as much as you,<br> +And laugh at it as such;<br> +But if they saw their Bishop land,<br> +His leg supported in his hand,<br> +The joke they wouldn’t understand -<br> +’T would pain them very much!”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: THE PRECOCIOUS BABY. A VERY TRUE TALE.<br> +(<i>To be sung to the Air of the “Whistling Oyster</i>.”)<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +An elderly person - a prophet by trade -<br> +With his quips and tips<br> +On withered old lips,<br> +He married a young and a beautiful maid;<br> +The cunning old blade!<br> +Though rather decayed,<br> +He married a beautiful, beautiful maid.<br> +<br> +She was only eighteen, and as fair as could be,<br> +With her tempting smiles<br> +And maidenly wiles,<br> +And he was a trifle past seventy-three:<br> +Now what she could see<br> +Is a puzzle to me,<br> +In a prophet of seventy - seventy-three!<br> +<br> +Of all their acquaintances bidden (or bad)<br> +With their loud high jinks<br> +And underbred winks,<br> +None thought they’d a family have - but they had;<br> +A dear little lad<br> +Who drove ’em half mad,<br> +For he turned out a horribly fast little cad.<br> +<br> +For when he was born he astonished all by,<br> +With their “Law, dear me!”<br> +“Did ever you see?”<br> +He’d a pipe in his mouth and a glass in his eye,<br> +A hat all awry -<br> +An octagon tie -<br> +And a miniature - miniature glass in his eye.<br> +<br> +He grumbled at wearing a frock and a cap,<br> +With his “Oh, dear, oh!”<br> +And his “Hang it! ’oo know!”<br> +And he turned up his nose at his excellent pap -<br> +“My friends, it’s a tap<br> +Dat is not worf a rap.”<br> +(Now this was remarkably excellent pap.)<br> +<br> +He’d chuck his nurse under the chin, and he’d say,<br> +With his “Fal, lal, lal” -<br> +“’Oo doosed fine gal!”<br> +This shocking precocity drove ’em away:<br> +“A month from to-day<br> +Is as long as I’ll stay -<br> +Then I’d wish, if you please, for to toddle away.”<br> +<br> +His father, a simple old gentleman, he<br> +With nursery rhyme<br> +And “Once on a time,”<br> +Would tell him the story of “Little Bo-P,”<br> +“So pretty was she,<br> +So pretty and wee,<br> +As pretty, as pretty, as pretty could be.”<br> +<br> +But the babe, with a dig that would startle an ox,<br> +With his “C’ck! Oh, my! -<br> +Go along wiz ’oo, fie!”<br> +Would exclaim, “I’m afraid ’oo a socking ole fox.”<br> +Now a father it shocks,<br> +And it whitens his locks,<br> +When his little babe calls him a shocking old fox.<br> +<br> +The name of his father he’d couple and pair<br> +(With his ill-bred laugh,<br> +And insolent chaff)<br> +With those of the nursery heroines rare -<br> +Virginia the Fair,<br> +Or Good Goldenhair,<br> +Till the nuisance was more than a prophet could bear.<br> +<br> +“There’s Jill and White Cat” (said the bold little +brat,<br> +With his loud, “Ha, ha!”)<br> +“’Oo sly ickle Pa!<br> +Wiz ’oo Beauty, Bo-Peep, and ’oo Mrs. Jack Sprat!<br> +I’ve noticed ’oo pat<br> +<i>My</i> pretty White Cat -<br> +I sink dear mamma ought to know about dat!”<br> +<br> +He early determined to marry and wive,<br> +For better or worse<br> +With his elderly nurse -<br> +Which the poor little boy didn’t live to contrive:<br> +His hearth didn’t thrive -<br> +No longer alive,<br> +He died an enfeebled old dotard at five!<br> +<br> +MORAL.<br> +<br> +Now, elderly men of the bachelor crew,<br> +With wrinkled hose<br> +And spectacled nose,<br> +Don’t marry at all - you may take it as true<br> +If ever you do<br> +The step you will rue,<br> +For your babes will be elderly - elderly too.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: TO PHOEBE. <a name="citation2"></a><a href="#footnote2">{2}</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“Gentle, modest little flower,<br> +Sweet epitome of May,<br> +Love me but for half an hour,<br> +Love me, love me, little fay.”<br> +Sentences so fiercely flaming<br> +In your tiny shell-like ear,<br> +I should always be exclaiming<br> +If I loved you, PHOEBE dear.<br> +<br> +“Smiles that thrill from any distance<br> +Shed upon me while I sing!<br> +Please ecstaticize existence,<br> +Love me, oh, thou fairy thing!”<br> +Words like these, outpouring sadly<br> +You’d perpetually hear,<br> +If I loved you fondly, madly; -<br> +But I do not, PHOEBE dear.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: BAINES CAREW, GENTLEMAN.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Of all the good attorneys who<br> +Have placed their names upon the roll,<br> +But few could equal BAINES CAREW<br> +For tender-heartedness and soul.<br> +<br> +Whene’er he heard a tale of woe<br> +From client A or client B,<br> +His grief would overcome him so<br> +He’d scarce have strength to take his fee.<br> +<br> +It laid him up for many days,<br> +When duty led him to distrain,<br> +And serving writs, although it pays,<br> +Gave him excruciating pain.<br> +<br> +He made out costs, distrained for rent,<br> +Foreclosed and sued, with moistened eye -<br> +No bill of costs could represent<br> +The value of such sympathy.<br> +<br> +No charges can approximate<br> +The worth of sympathy with woe; -<br> +Although I think I ought to state<br> +He did his best to make them so.<br> +<br> +Of all the many clients who<br> +Had mustered round his legal flag,<br> +No single client of the crew<br> +Was half so dear as CAPTAIN BAGG.<br> +<br> +Now, CAPTAIN BAGG had bowed him to<br> +A heavy matrimonial yoke -<br> +His wifey had of faults a few -<br> +She never could resist a joke.<br> +<br> +Her chaff at first he meekly bore,<br> +Till unendurable it grew.<br> +“To stop this persecution sore<br> +I will consult my friend CAREW.<br> +<br> +“And when CAREW’S advice I’ve got,<br> +Divorce <i>a mensâ</i> I shall try.”<br> +(A legal separation - not<br> +<i>A vinculo conjugii</i>.)<br> +<br> +“Oh, BAINES CAREW, my woe I’ve kept<br> +A secret hitherto, you know;” -<br> +(And BAINES CAREW, ESQUIRE, he wept<br> +To hear that BAGG <i>had</i> any woe.)<br> +<br> +“My case, indeed, is passing sad.<br> +My wife - whom I considered true -<br> +With brutal conduct drives me mad.”<br> +“I am appalled,” said BAINES CAREW.<br> +<br> +“What! sound the matrimonial knell<br> +Of worthy people such as these!<br> +Why was I an attorney? Well -<br> +Go on to the <i>saevitia</i>, please.”<br> +<br> +“Domestic bliss has proved my bane, -<br> +A harder case you never heard,<br> +My wife (in other matters sane)<br> +Pretends that I’m a Dicky bird!<br> +<br> +“She makes me sing, ‘Too-whit, too-wee!’<br> +And stand upon a rounded stick,<br> +And always introduces me<br> +To every one as ‘Pretty Dick’!”<br> +<br> +“Oh, dear,” said weeping BAINES CAREW,<br> +“This is the direst case I know.”<br> +“I’m grieved,” said BAGG, “at paining you -<br> +“To COBB and POLTHERTHWAITE I’ll go -<br> +<br> +“To COBB’S cold, calculating ear,<br> +My gruesome sorrows I’ll impart” -<br> +“No; stop,” said BAINES, “I’ll dry my tear,<br> +And steel my sympathetic heart.”<br> +<br> +“She makes me perch upon a tree,<br> +Rewarding me with ‘Sweety - nice!’<br> +And threatens to exhibit me<br> +With four or five performing mice.”<br> +<br> +“Restrain my tears I wish I could”<br> +(Said BAINES), “I don’t know what to do.”<br> +Said CAPTAIN BAGG, “You’re very good.”<br> +“Oh, not at all,” said BAINES CAREW.<br> +<br> +“She makes me fire a gun,” said BAGG;<br> +“And, at a preconcerted word,<br> +Climb up a ladder with a flag,<br> +Like any street performing bird.<br> +<br> +“She places sugar in my way -<br> +In public places calls me ‘Sweet!’<br> +She gives me groundsel every day,<br> +And hard canary-seed to eat.”<br> +<br> +“Oh, woe! oh, sad! oh, dire to tell!”<br> +(Said BAINES). “Be good enough to stop.”<br> +And senseless on the floor he fell,<br> +With unpremeditated flop!<br> +<br> +Said CAPTAIN BAGG, “Well, really I<br> +Am grieved to think it pains you so.<br> +I thank you for your sympathy;<br> +But, hang it! - come - I say, you know!”<br> +<br> +But BAINES lay flat upon the floor,<br> +Convulsed with sympathetic sob; -<br> +The Captain toddled off next door,<br> +And gave the case to MR. COBB.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: THOMAS WINTERBOTTOM HANCE.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +In all the towns and cities fair<br> +On Merry England’s broad expanse,<br> +No swordsman ever could compare<br> +With THOMAS WINTERBOTTOM HANCE.<br> +<br> +The dauntless lad could fairly hew<br> +A silken handkerchief in twain,<br> +Divide a leg of mutton too -<br> +And this without unwholesome strain.<br> +<br> +On whole half-sheep, with cunning trick,<br> +His sabre sometimes he’d employ -<br> +No bar of lead, however thick,<br> +Had terrors for the stalwart boy.<br> +<br> +At Dover daily he’d prepare<br> +To hew and slash, behind, before -<br> +Which aggravated MONSIEUR PIERRE,<br> +Who watched him from the Calais shore.<br> +<br> +It caused good PIERRE to swear and dance,<br> +The sight annoyed and vexed him so;<br> +He was the bravest man in France -<br> +He said so, and he ought to know.<br> +<br> +“Regardez donc, ce cochon gros -<br> +Ce polisson! Oh, sacré bleu!<br> +Son sabre, son plomb, et ses gigots<br> +Comme cela m’ennuye, enfin, mon Dieu!<br> +<br> +“Il sait que les foulards de soie<br> +Give no retaliating whack -<br> +Les gigots morts n’ont pas de quoi -<br> +Le plomb don’t ever hit you back.”<br> +<br> +But every day the headstrong lad<br> +Cut lead and mutton more and more;<br> +And every day poor PIERRE, half mad,<br> +Shrieked loud defiance from his shore.<br> +<br> +HANCE had a mother, poor and old,<br> +A simple, harmless village dame,<br> +Who crowed and clapped as people told<br> +Of WINTERBOTTOM’S rising fame.<br> +<br> +She said, “I’ll be upon the spot<br> +To see my TOMMY’S sabre-play;”<br> +And so she left her leafy cot,<br> +And walked to Dover in a day.<br> +<br> +PIERRE had a doating mother, who<br> +Had heard of his defiant rage;<br> +<i>His</i> Ma was nearly ninety-two,<br> +And rather dressy for her age.<br> +<br> +At HANCE’S doings every morn,<br> +With sheer delight <i>his</i> mother cried;<br> +And MONSIEUR PIERRE’S contemptuous scorn<br> +Filled <i>his</i> mamma with proper pride.<br> +<br> +But HANCE’S powers began to fail -<br> +His constitution was not strong -<br> +And PIERRE, who once was stout and hale,<br> +Grew thin from shouting all day long.<br> +<br> +Their mothers saw them pale and wan,<br> +Maternal anguish tore each breast,<br> +And so they met to find a plan<br> +To set their offsprings’ minds at rest.<br> +<br> +Said MRS. HANCE, “Of course I shrinks<br> +From bloodshed, ma’am, as you’re aware,<br> +But still they’d better meet, I thinks.”<br> +“Assurément!” said MADAME PIERRE.<br> +<br> +A sunny spot in sunny France<br> +Was hit upon for this affair;<br> +The ground was picked by MRS. HANCE,<br> +The stakes were pitched by MADAME PIERRE.<br> +<br> +Said MRS. H., “Your work you see -<br> +Go in, my noble boy, and win.”<br> +“En garde, mon fils!” said MADAME P.<br> +“Allons!” “Go on!” “En garde!” +“Begin!”<br> +<br> +(The mothers were of decent size,<br> +Though not particularly tall;<br> +But in the sketch that meets your eyes<br> +I’ve been obliged to draw them small.)<br> +<br> +Loud sneered the doughty man of France,<br> +“Ho! ho! Ho! ho! Ha! ha! Ha! ha!<br> +“The French for ‘Pish’” said THOMAS HANCE.<br> +Said PIERRE, “L’Anglais, Monsieur, pour ‘Bah.’”<br> +<br> +Said MRS. H., “Come, one! two! three! -<br> +We’re sittin’ here to see all fair.”<br> +“C’est magnifique!” said MADAME P.,<br> +“Mais, parbleu! ce n’est pas la guerre!”<br> +<br> +“Je scorn un foe si lache que vous,”<br> +Said PIERRE, the doughty son of France.<br> +“I fight not coward foe like you!”<br> +Said our undaunted TOMMY HANCE.<br> +<br> +“The French for ‘Pooh!’” our TOMMY cried.<br> +“L’Anglais pour ‘Va!’” the Frenchman crowed.<br> +And so, with undiminished pride,<br> +Each went on his respective road.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: A DISCONTENTED SUGAR BROKER.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A gentleman of City fame<br> +Now claims your kind attention;<br> +East India broking was his game,<br> +His name I shall not mention:<br> +No one of finely-pointed sense<br> +Would violate a confidence,<br> +And shall <i>I</i> go<br> +And do it? No!<br> +His name I shall not mention.<br> +<br> +He had a trusty wife and true,<br> +And very cosy quarters,<br> +A manager, a boy or two,<br> +Six clerks, and seven porters.<br> +A broker must be doing well<br> +(As any lunatic can tell)<br> +Who can employ<br> +An active boy,<br> +Six clerks, and seven porters.<br> +<br> +His knocker advertised no dun,<br> +No losses made him sulky,<br> +He had one sorrow - only one -<br> +He was extremely bulky.<br> +A man must be, I beg to state,<br> +Exceptionally fortunate<br> +Who owns his chief<br> +And only grief<br> +Is - being very bulky.<br> +<br> +“This load,” he’d say, “I cannot bear;<br> +I’m nineteen stone or twenty!<br> +Henceforward I’ll go in for air<br> +And exercise in plenty.”<br> +Most people think that, should it come,<br> +They can reduce a bulging tum<br> +To measures fair<br> +By taking air<br> +And exercise in plenty.<br> +<br> +In every weather, every day,<br> +Dry, muddy, wet, or gritty,<br> +He took to dancing all the way<br> +From Brompton to the City.<br> +You do not often get the chance<br> +Of seeing sugar brokers dance<br> +From their abode<br> +In Fulham Road<br> +Through Brompton to the City.<br> +<br> +He braved the gay and guileless laugh<br> +Of children with their nusses,<br> +The loud uneducated chaff<br> +Of clerks on omnibuses.<br> +Against all minor things that rack<br> +A nicely-balanced mind, I’ll back<br> +The noisy chaff<br> +And ill-bred laugh<br> +Of clerks on omnibuses.<br> +<br> +His friends, who heard his money chink,<br> +And saw the house he rented,<br> +And knew his wife, could never think<br> +What made him discontented.<br> +It never entered their pure minds<br> +That fads are of eccentric kinds,<br> +Nor would they own<br> +That fat alone<br> +Could make one discontented.<br> +<br> +“Your riches know no kind of pause,<br> +Your trade is fast advancing;<br> +You dance - but not for joy, because<br> +You weep as you are dancing.<br> +To dance implies that man is glad,<br> +To weep implies that man is sad;<br> +But here are you<br> +Who do the two -<br> +You weep as you are dancing!”<br> +<br> +His mania soon got noised about<br> +And into all the papers;<br> +His size increased beyond a doubt<br> +For all his reckless capers:<br> +It may seem singular to you,<br> +But all his friends admit it true -<br> +The more he found<br> +His figure round,<br> +The more he cut his capers.<br> +<br> +His bulk increased - no matter that -<br> +He tried the more to toss it -<br> +He never spoke of it as “fat,”<br> +But “adipose deposit.”<br> +Upon my word, it seems to me<br> +Unpardonable vanity<br> +(And worse than that)<br> +To call your fat<br> +An “adipose deposit.”<br> +<br> +At length his brawny knees gave way,<br> +And on the carpet sinking,<br> +Upon his shapeless back he lay<br> +And kicked away like winking.<br> +Instead of seeing in his state<br> +The finger of unswerving Fate,<br> +He laboured still<br> +To work his will,<br> +And kicked away like winking.<br> +<br> +His friends, disgusted with him now,<br> +Away in silence wended -<br> +I hardly like to tell you how<br> +This dreadful story ended.<br> +The shocking sequel to impart,<br> +I must employ the limner’s art -<br> +If you would know,<br> +This sketch will show<br> +How his exertions ended.<br> +<br> +MORAL.<br> +<br> +I hate to preach - I hate to prate -<br> +- I’m no fanatic croaker,<br> +But learn contentment from the fate<br> +Of this East India broker.<br> +He’d everything a man of taste<br> +Could ever want, except a waist;<br> +And discontent<br> +His size anent,<br> +And bootless perseverance blind,<br> +Completely wrecked the peace of mind<br> +Of this East India broker.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: THE PANTOMIME “SUPER” TO HIS MASK.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Vast empty shell!<br> +Impertinent, preposterous abortion!<br> +With vacant stare,<br> +And ragged hair,<br> +And every feature out of all proportion!<br> +Embodiment of echoing inanity!<br> +Excellent type of simpering insanity!<br> +Unwieldy, clumsy nightmare of humanity!<br> +I ring thy knell!<br> +<br> +To-night thou diest,<br> +Beast that destroy’st my heaven-born identity!<br> +Nine weeks of nights,<br> +Before the lights,<br> +Swamped in thine own preposterous nonentity,<br> +I’ve been ill-treated, cursed, and thrashed diurnally,<br> +Credited for the smile you wear externally -<br> +I feel disposed to smash thy face, infernally,<br> +As there thou liest!<br> +<br> +I’ve been thy brain:<br> +<i>I’ve</i> been the brain that lit thy dull concavity!<br> +The human race<br> +Invest <i>my</i> face<br> +With thine expression of unchecked depravity,<br> +Invested with a ghastly reciprocity,<br> +<i>I’ve</i> been responsible for thy monstrosity,<br> +I, for thy wanton, blundering ferocity -<br> +But not again!<br> +<br> +’T is time to toll<br> +Thy knell, and that of follies pantomimical:<br> +A nine weeks’ run,<br> +And thou hast done<br> +All thou canst do to make thyself inimical.<br> +Adieu, embodiment of all inanity!<br> +Excellent type of simpering insanity!<br> +Unwieldy, clumsy nightmare of humanity!<br> +Freed is thy soul!<br> +<br> +(<i>The Mask respondeth</i>.)<br> +<br> +Oh! master mine,<br> +Look thou within thee, ere again ill-using me.<br> +Art thou aware<br> +Of nothing there<br> +Which might abuse thee, as thou art abusing me?<br> +A brain that mourns <i>thine</i> unredeemed rascality?<br> +A soul that weeps at <i>thy</i> threadbare morality?<br> +Both grieving that <i>their</i> individuality<br> +Is merged in thine?<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: THE GHOST, THE GALLANT, THE GAEL, AND THE GOBLIN.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +O’er unreclaimed suburban clays<br> +Some years ago were hobblin’<br> +An elderly ghost of easy ways,<br> +And an influential goblin.<br> +The ghost was a sombre spectral shape,<br> +A fine old five-act fogy,<br> +The goblin imp, a lithe young ape,<br> +A fine low-comedy bogy.<br> +<br> +And as they exercised their joints,<br> +Promoting quick digestion,<br> +They talked on several curious points,<br> +And raised this delicate question:<br> +“Which of us two is Number One -<br> +The ghostie, or the goblin?”<br> +And o’er the point they raised in fun<br> +They fairly fell a-squabblin’.<br> +<br> +They’d barely speak, and each, in fine,<br> +Grew more and more reflective:<br> +Each thought his own particular line<br> +By chalks the more effective.<br> +At length they settled some one should<br> +By each of them be haunted,<br> +And so arrange that either could<br> +Exert his prowess vaunted.<br> +<br> +“The Quaint against the Statuesque” -<br> +By competition lawful -<br> +The goblin backed the Quaint Grotesque,<br> +The ghost the Grandly Awful.<br> +“Now,” said the goblin, “here’s my plan -<br> +In attitude commanding,<br> +I see a stalwart Englishman<br> +By yonder tailor’s standing.<br> +<br> +“The very fittest man on earth<br> +My influence to try on -<br> +Of gentle, p’r’aps of noble birth,<br> +And dauntless as a lion!<br> +Now wrap yourself within your shroud -<br> +Remain in easy hearing -<br> +Observe - you’ll hear him scream aloud<br> +When I begin appearing!<br> +<br> +The imp with yell unearthly - wild -<br> +Threw off his dark enclosure:<br> +His dauntless victim looked and smiled<br> +With singular composure.<br> +For hours he tried to daunt the youth,<br> +For days, indeed, but vainly -<br> +The stripling smiled! - to tell the truth,<br> +The stripling smiled inanely.<br> +<br> +For weeks the goblin weird and wild,<br> +That noble stripling haunted;<br> +For weeks the stripling stood and smiled,<br> +Unmoved and all undaunted.<br> +The sombre ghost exclaimed, “Your plan<br> +Has failed you, goblin, plainly:<br> +Now watch yon hardy Hieland man,<br> +So stalwart and ungainly.<br> +<br> +“These are the men who chase the roe,<br> +Whose footsteps never falter,<br> +Who bring with them, where’er they go,<br> +A smack of old SIR WALTER.<br> +Of such as he, the men sublime<br> +Who lead their troops victorious,<br> +Whose deeds go down to after-time,<br> +Enshrined in annals glorious!<br> +<br> +“Of such as he the bard has said<br> +‘Hech thrawfu’ raltie rorkie!<br> +Wi’ thecht ta’ croonie clapperhead<br> +And fash’ wi’ unco pawkie!’<br> +He’ll faint away when I appear,<br> +Upon his native heather;<br> +Or p’r’aps he’ll only scream with fear,<br> +Or p’r’aps the two together.”<br> +<br> +The spectre showed himself, alone,<br> +To do his ghostly battling,<br> +With curdling groan and dismal moan,<br> +And lots of chains a-rattling!<br> +But no - the chiel’s stout Gaelic stuff<br> +Withstood all ghostly harrying;<br> +His fingers closed upon the snuff<br> +Which upwards he was carrying.<br> +<br> +For days that ghost declined to stir,<br> +A foggy shapeless giant -<br> +For weeks that splendid officer<br> +Stared back again defiant.<br> +Just as the Englishman returned<br> +The goblin’s vulgar staring,<br> +Just so the Scotchman boldly spurned<br> +The ghost’s unmannered scaring.<br> +<br> +For several years the ghostly twain<br> +These Britons bold have haunted,<br> +But all their efforts are in vain -<br> +Their victims stand undaunted.<br> +This very day the imp, and ghost,<br> +Whose powers the imp derided,<br> +Stand each at his allotted post -<br> +The bet is undecided.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: THE PHANTOM CURATE. A FABLE.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A Bishop once - I will not name his see -<br> +Annoyed his clergy in the mode conventional;<br> +From pulpit shackles never set them free,<br> +And found a sin where sin was unintentional.<br> +All pleasures ended in abuse auricular -<br> +The Bishop was so terribly particular.<br> +<br> +Though, on the whole, a wise and upright man,<br> +He sought to make of human pleasures clearances;<br> +And form his priests on that much-lauded plan<br> +Which pays undue attention to appearances.<br> +He couldn’t do good deeds without a psalm in ’em,<br> +Although, in truth, he bore away the palm in ’em.<br> +<br> +Enraged to find a deacon at a dance,<br> +Or catch a curate at some mild frivolity,<br> +He sought by open censure to enhance<br> +Their dread of joining harmless social jollity.<br> +Yet he enjoyed (a fact of notoriety)<br> +The ordinary pleasures of society.<br> +<br> +One evening, sitting at a pantomime<br> +(Forbidden treat to those who stood in fear of him),<br> +Roaring at jokes, <i>sans</i> metre, sense, or rhyme,<br> +He turned, and saw immediately in rear of him,<br> +His peace of mind upsetting, and annoying it,<br> +A curate, also heartily enjoying it.<br> +<br> +Again, ’t was Christmas Eve, and to enhance<br> +His children’s pleasure in their harmless rollicking,<br> +He, like a good old fellow, stood to dance;<br> +When something checked the current of his frolicking:<br> +That curate, with a maid he treated lover-ly,<br> +Stood up and figured with him in the “Coverley!”<br> +<br> +Once, yielding to an universal choice<br> +(The company’s demand was an emphatic one,<br> +For the old Bishop had a glorious voice),<br> +In a quartet he joined - an operatic one.<br> +Harmless enough, though ne’er a word of grace in it,<br> +When, lo! that curate came and took the bass in it!<br> +<br> +One day, when passing through a quiet street,<br> +He stopped awhile and joined a Punch’s gathering;<br> +And chuckled more than solemn folk think meet,<br> +To see that gentleman his Judy lathering;<br> +And heard, as Punch was being treated penalty,<br> +That phantom curate laughing all hyaenally.<br> +<br> +Now at a picnic, ’mid fair golden curls,<br> +Bright eyes, straw hats, <i>bottines</i> that fit amazingly,<br> +A croquêt-bout is planned by all the girls;<br> +And he, consenting, speaks of croquêt praisingly;<br> +But suddenly declines to play at all in it -<br> +The curate fiend has come to take a ball in it!<br> +<br> +Next, when at quiet sea-side village, freed<br> +From cares episcopal and ties monarchical,<br> +He grows his beard, and smokes his fragrant weed,<br> +In manner anything but hierarchical -<br> +He sees - and fixes an unearthly stare on it -<br> +That curate’s face, with half a yard of hair on it!<br> +<br> +At length he gave a charge, and spake this word:<br> +“Vicars, your curates to enjoyment urge ye may;<br> +To check their harmless pleasuring’s absurd;<br> +What laymen do without reproach, my clergy may.”<br> +He spake, and lo! at this concluding word of him,<br> +The curate vanished - no one since has heard of him.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: KING BORRIA BUNGALEE BOO.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +KING BORRIA BUNGALEE BOO<br> +Was a man-eating African swell;<br> +His sigh was a hullaballoo,<br> +His whisper a horrible yell -<br> +A horrible, horrible yell!<br> +<br> +Four subjects, and all of them male,<br> +To BORRIA doubled the knee,<br> +They were once on a far larger scale,<br> +But he’d eaten the balance, you see<br> +(“Scale” and “balance” is punning, you see).<br> +<br> +There was haughty PISH-TUSH-POOH-BAH,<br> +There was lumbering DOODLE-DUM-DEY,<br> +Despairing ALACK-A-DEY-AH,<br> +And good little TOOTLE-TUM-TEH -<br> +Exemplary TOOTLE-TUM-TEH.<br> +<br> +One day there was grief in the crew,<br> +For they hadn’t a morsel of meat,<br> +And BORRIA BUNGALEE BOO<br> +Was dying for something to eat -<br> +“Come, provide me with something to eat!<br> +<br> +“ALACK-A-DEY, famished I feel;<br> +Oh, good little TOOTLE-TUM-TEH,<br> +Where on earth shall I look for a meal?<br> +For I haven’t no dinner to-day! -<br> +Not a morsel of dinner to-day!<br> +<br> +“Dear TOOTLE-TUM, what shall we do?<br> +Come, get us a meal, or, in truth,<br> +If you don’t, we shall have to eat you,<br> +Oh, adorable friend of our youth!<br> +Thou beloved little friend of our youth!”<br> +<br> +And he answered, “Oh, BUNGALEE BOO,<br> +For a moment I hope you will wait, -<br> +TIPPY-WIPPITY TOL-THE-ROL-LOO<br> +Is the Queen of a neighbouring state -<br> +A remarkably neighbouring state.<br> +<br> +“TIPPY-WIPPITY TOL-THE-ROL-LOO,<br> +She would pickle deliciously cold -<br> +And her four pretty Amazons, too,<br> +Are enticing, and not very old -<br> +Twenty-seven is not very old.<br> +<br> +“There is neat little TITTY-FOL-LEH,<br> +There is rollicking TRAL-THE-RAL-LAH,<br> +There is jocular WAGGETY-WEH,<br> +There is musical DOH-REH-MI-FAH -<br> +There’s the nightingale DOH-REH-MI-FAH!”<br> +<br> +So the forces of BUNGALEE BOO<br> +Marched forth in a terrible row,<br> +And the ladies who fought for QUEEN LOO<br> +Prepared to encounter the foe -<br> +This dreadful, insatiate foe!<br> +<br> +But they sharpened no weapons at all,<br> +And they poisoned no arrows - not they!<br> +They made ready to conquer or fall<br> +In a totally different way -<br> +An entirely different way.<br> +<br> +With a crimson and pearly-white dye<br> +They endeavoured to make themselves fair,<br> +With black they encircled each eye,<br> +And with yellow they painted their hair<br> +(It was wool, but they thought it was hair).<br> +<br> +And the forces they met in the field:-<br> +And the men of KING BORRIA said,<br> +“Amazonians, immediately yield!”<br> +And their arrows they drew to the head -<br> +Yes, drew them right up to the head.<br> +<br> +But jocular WAGGETY-WEH<br> +Ogled DOODLE-DUM-DEY (which was wrong),<br> +And neat little TITTY-FOL-LEH<br> +Said, “TOOTLE-TUM, you go along!<br> +You naughty old dear, go along!”<br> +<br> +And rollicking TRAL-THE-RAL-LAH<br> +Tapped ALACK-A-DEY-AH with her fan;<br> +And musical DOH-REH-MI-FAH<br> +Said, “PISH, go away, you bad man!<br> +Go away, you delightful young man!”<br> +<br> +And the Amazons simpered and sighed,<br> +And they ogled, and giggled, and flushed,<br> +And they opened their pretty eyes wide,<br> +And they chuckled, and flirted, and blushed<br> +(At least, if they could, they’d have blushed).<br> +<br> +But haughty PISH-TUSH-POOH-BAH<br> +Said, “ALACK-A-DEY, what does this mean?”<br> +And despairing ALACK-A-DEY-AH<br> +Said, “They think us uncommonly green!<br> +Ha! ha! most uncommonly green!”<br> +<br> +Even blundering DOODLE-DUM-DEY<br> +Was insensible quite to their leers,<br> +And said good little TOOTLE-TUM-TEH,<br> +“It’s your blood we desire, pretty dears -<br> +We have come for our dinners, my dears!”<br> +<br> +And the Queen of the Amazons fell<br> +To BORRIA BUNGALEE BOO, -<br> +In a mouthful he gulped, with a yell,<br> +TIPPY-WIPPITY TOL-THE-ROL-LOO -<br> +The pretty QUEEN TOL-THE-ROL-LOO.<br> +<br> +And neat little TITTY-FOL-LEH<br> +Was eaten by PISH-POOH-BAH,<br> +And light-hearted WAGGETY-WEH<br> +By dismal ALACK-A-DEY-AH -<br> +Despairing ALACK-A-DEY-AH.<br> +<br> +And rollicking TRAL-THE-RAL-LAH<br> +Was eaten by DOODLE-DUM-DEY,<br> +And musical DOH-REH-MI-FAH<br> +By good little TOOTLE-DUM-TEH -<br> +Exemplary TOOTLE-TUM-TEH!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: BOB POLTER.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +BOB POLTER was a navvy, and<br> +His hands were coarse, and dirty too,<br> +His homely face was rough and tanned,<br> +His time of life was thirty-two.<br> +<br> +He lived among a working clan<br> +(A wife he hadn’t got at all),<br> +A decent, steady, sober man -<br> +No saint, however - not at all.<br> +<br> +He smoked, but in a modest way,<br> +Because he thought he needed it;<br> +He drank a pot of beer a day,<br> +And sometimes he exceeded it.<br> +<br> +At times he’d pass with other men<br> +A loud convivial night or two,<br> +With, very likely, now and then,<br> +On Saturdays, a fight or two.<br> +<br> +But still he was a sober soul,<br> +A labour-never-shirking man,<br> +Who paid his way - upon the whole<br> +A decent English working man.<br> +<br> +One day, when at the Nelson’s Head<br> +(For which he may be blamed of you),<br> +A holy man appeared, and said,<br> +“Oh, ROBERT, I’m ashamed of you.”<br> +<br> +He laid his hand on ROBERT’S beer<br> +Before he could drink up any,<br> +And on the floor, with sigh and tear,<br> +He poured the pot of “thruppenny.”<br> +<br> +“Oh, ROBERT, at this very bar<br> +A truth you’ll be discovering,<br> +A good and evil genius are<br> +Around your noddle hovering.<br> +<br> +“They both are here to bid you shun<br> +The other one’s society,<br> +For Total Abstinence is one,<br> +The other, Inebriety.”<br> +<br> +He waved his hand - a vapour came -<br> +A wizard POLTER reckoned him;<br> +A bogy rose and called his name,<br> +And with his finger beckoned him.<br> +<br> +The monster’s salient points to sum, -<br> +His heavy breath was portery:<br> +His glowing nose suggested rum:<br> +His eyes were gin-and-<i>wor</i>tery.<br> +<br> +His dress was torn - for dregs of ale<br> +And slops of gin had rusted it;<br> +His pimpled face was wan and pale,<br> +Where filth had not encrusted it.<br> +<br> +“Come, POLTER,” said the fiend, “begin,<br> +And keep the bowl a-flowing on -<br> +A working man needs pints of gin<br> +To keep his clockwork going on.”<br> +<br> +BOB shuddered: “Ah, you’ve made a miss<br> +If you take me for one of you:<br> +You filthy beast, get out of this -<br> +BOB POLTER don’t wan’t none of you.”<br> +<br> +The demon gave a drunken shriek,<br> +And crept away in stealthiness,<br> +And lo! instead, a person sleek,<br> +Who seemed to burst with healthiness.<br> +<br> +“In me, as your adviser hints,<br> +Of Abstinence you’ve got a type -<br> +Of MR. TWEEDIE’S pretty prints<br> +I am the happy prototype.<br> +<br> +“If you abjure the social toast,<br> +And pipes, and such frivolities,<br> +You possibly some day may boast<br> +My prepossessing qualities!”<br> +<br> +BOB rubbed his eyes, and made ’em blink:<br> +“You almost make me tremble, you!<br> +If I abjure fermented drink,<br> +Shall I, indeed, resemble you?<br> +<br> +“And will my whiskers curl so tight?<br> +My cheeks grow smug and muttony?<br> +My face become so red and white?<br> +My coat so blue and buttony?<br> +<br> +“Will trousers, such as yours, array<br> +Extremities inferior?<br> +Will chubbiness assert its sway<br> +All over my exterior?<br> +<br> +“In this, my unenlightened state,<br> +To work in heavy boots I comes;<br> +Will pumps henceforward decorate<br> +My tiddle toddle tootsicums?<br> +<br> +“And shall I get so plump and fresh,<br> +And look no longer seedily?<br> +My skin will henceforth fit my flesh<br> +So tightly and so TWEEDIE-ly?”<br> +<br> +The phantom said, “You’ll have all this,<br> +You’ll know no kind of huffiness,<br> +Your life will be one chubby bliss,<br> +One long unruffled puffiness!”<br> +<br> +“Be off!” said irritated BOB.<br> +“Why come you here to bother one?<br> +You pharisaical old snob,<br> +You’re wuss almost than t’other one!<br> +<br> +“I takes my pipe - I takes my pot,<br> +And drunk I’m never seen to be:<br> +I’m no teetotaller or sot,<br> +And as I am I mean to be!”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: THE STORY OF PRINCE AGIB.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Strike the concertina’s melancholy string!<br> +Blow the spirit-stirring harp like anything!<br> +Let the piano’s martial blast<br> +Rouse the Echoes of the Past,<br> +For of AGIB, PRINCE OF TARTARY, I sing!<br> +<br> +Of AGIB, who, amid Tartaric scenes,<br> +Wrote a lot of ballet music in his teens:<br> +His gentle spirit rolls<br> +In the melody of souls -<br> +Which is pretty, but I don’t know what it means.<br> +<br> +Of AGIB, who could readily, at sight,<br> +Strum a march upon the loud Theodolite.<br> +He would diligently play<br> +On the Zoetrope all day,<br> +And blow the gay Pantechnicon all night.<br> +<br> +One winter - I am shaky in my dates -<br> +Came two starving Tartar minstrels to his gates;<br> +Oh, ALLAH be obeyed,<br> +How infernally they played!<br> +I remember that they called themselves the “Oüaits.”<br> +<br> +Oh! that day of sorrow, misery, and rage,<br> +I shall carry to the Catacombs of Age,<br> +Photographically lined<br> +On the tablet of my mind,<br> +When a yesterday has faded from its page!<br> +<br> +Alas! PRINCE AGIB went and asked them in;<br> +Gave them beer, and eggs, and sweets, and scent, and tin.<br> +And when (as snobs would say)<br> +They had “put it all away,”<br> +He requested them to tune up and begin.<br> +<br> +Though its icy horror chill you to the core,<br> +I will tell you what I never told before, -<br> +The consequences true<br> +Of that awful interview,<br> +<i>For I listened at the keyhole in the door</i>!<br> +<br> +They played him a sonata - let me see!<br> +“<i>Medulla oblongata</i>” - key of G.<br> +Then they began to sing<br> +That extremely lovely thing,<br> +<i>Scherzando! ma non troppo, ppp</i>.”<br> +<br> +He gave them money, more than they could count,<br> +Scent from a most ingenious little fount,<br> +More beer, in little kegs,<br> +Many dozen hard-boiled eggs,<br> +And goodies to a fabulous amount.<br> +<br> +Now follows the dim horror of my tale,<br> +And I feel I’m growing gradually pale,<br> +For, even at this day,<br> +Though its sting has passed away,<br> +When I venture to remember it, I quail!<br> +<br> +The elder of the brothers gave a squeal,<br> +All-overish it made me for to feel;<br> +“Oh, PRINCE,” he says, says he,<br> +“<i>If a Prince indeed you be</i>,<br> +I’ve a mystery I’m going to reveal!<br> +<br> +“Oh, listen, if you’d shun a horrid death,<br> +To what the gent who’s speaking to you saith:<br> +No ‘Oüaits’ in truth are we,<br> +As you fancy that we be,<br> +For (ter-remble!) I am ALECK - this is BETH!”<br> +<br> +Said AGIB, “Oh! accursed of your kind,<br> +I have heard that ye are men of evil mind!”<br> +BETH gave a dreadful shriek -<br> +But before he’d time to speak<br> +I was mercilessly collared from behind.<br> +<br> +In number ten or twelve, or even more,<br> +They fastened me full length upon the floor.<br> +On my face extended flat,<br> +I was walloped with a cat<br> +For listening at the keyhole of a door.<br> +<br> +Oh! the horror of that agonizing thrill!<br> +(I can feel the place in frosty weather still).<br> +For a week from ten to four<br> +I was fastened to the floor,<br> +While a mercenary wopped me with a will<br> +<br> +They branded me and broke me on a wheel,<br> +And they left me in an hospital to heal;<br> +And, upon my solemn word,<br> +I have never never heard<br> +What those Tartars had determined to reveal.<br> +<br> +But that day of sorrow, misery, and rage,<br> +I shall carry to the Catacombs of Age,<br> +Photographically lined<br> +On the tablet of my mind,<br> +When a yesterday has faded from its page<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: ELLEN McJONES ABERDEEN.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +MACPHAIRSON CLONGLOCKETTY ANGUS McCLAN<br> +Was the son of an elderly labouring man;<br> +You’ve guessed him a Scotchman, shrewd reader, at sight,<br> +And p’r’aps altogether, shrewd reader, you’re right.<br> +<br> +From the bonnie blue Forth to the lovely Deeside,<br> +Round by Dingwall and Wrath to the mouth of the Clyde,<br> +There wasn’t a child or a woman or man<br> +Who could pipe with CLONGLOCKETTY ANGUS McCLAN.<br> +<br> +No other could wake such detestable groans,<br> +With reed and with chaunter - with bag and with drones:<br> +All day and ill night he delighted the chiels<br> +With sniggering pibrochs and jiggety reels.<br> +<br> +He’d clamber a mountain and squat on the ground,<br> +And the neighbouring maidens would gather around<br> +To list to the pipes and to gaze in his een,<br> +Especially ELLEN McJONES ABERDEEN.<br> +<br> +All loved their McCLAN, save a Sassenach brute,<br> +Who came to the Highlands to fish and to shoot;<br> +He dressed himself up in a Highlander way,<br> +Tho’ his name it was PATTISON CORBY TORBAY.<br> +<br> +TORBAY had incurred a good deal of expense<br> +To make him a Scotchman in every sense;<br> +But this is a matter, you’ll readily own,<br> +That isn’t a question of tailors alone.<br> +<br> +A Sassenach chief may be bonily built,<br> +He may purchase a sporran, a bonnet, and kilt;<br> +Stick a skeän in his hose - wear an acre of stripes -<br> +But he cannot assume an affection for pipes.<br> +<br> +CLONGLOCKETY’S pipings all night and all day<br> +Quite frenzied poor PATTISON CORBY TORBAY;<br> +The girls were amused at his singular spleen,<br> +Especially ELLEN McJONES ABERDEEN,<br> +<br> +“MACPHAIRSON CLONGLOCKETTY ANGUS, my lad,<br> +With pibrochs and reels you are driving me mad.<br> +If you really must play on that cursed affair,<br> +My goodness! play something resembling an air.”<br> +<br> +Boiled over the blood of MACPHAIRSON McCLAN -<br> +The Clan of Clonglocketty rose as one man;<br> +For all were enraged at the insult, I ween -<br> +Especially ELLEN McJONES ABERDEEN.<br> +<br> +“Let’s show,” said McCLAN, “to this Sassenach +loon<br> +That the bagpipes <i>can</i> play him a regular tune.<br> +Let’s see,” said McCLAN, as he thoughtfully sat,<br> +“‘<i>In my Cottage</i>’ is easy - I’ll practise +at that.”<br> +<br> +He blew at his “Cottage,” and blew with a will,<br> +For a year, seven months, and a fortnight, until<br> +(You’ll hardly believe it) McCLAN, I declare,<br> +Elicited something resembling an air.<br> +<br> +It was wild - it was fitful - as wild as the breeze -<br> +It wandered about into several keys;<br> +It was jerky, spasmodic, and harsh, I’m aware;<br> +But still it distinctly suggested an air.<br> +<br> +The Sassenach screamed, and the Sassenach danced;<br> +He shrieked in his agony - bellowed and pranced;<br> +And the maidens who gathered rejoiced at the scene -<br> +Especially ELLEN McJONES ABERDEEN.<br> +<br> +“Hech gather, hech gather, hech gather around;<br> +And fill a’ ye lugs wi’ the exquisite sound.<br> +An air fra’ the bagpipes - beat that if ye can!<br> +Hurrah for CLONGLOCKETTY ANGUS McCLAN!”<br> +<br> +The fame of his piping spread over the land:<br> +Respectable widows proposed for his hand,<br> +And maidens came flocking to sit on the green -<br> +Especially ELLEN McJONES ABERDEEN.<br> +<br> +One morning the fidgety Sassenach swore<br> +He’d stand it no longer - he drew his claymore,<br> +And (this was, I think, in extremely bad taste)<br> +Divided CLONGLOCKETTY close to the waist.<br> +<br> +Oh! loud were the wailings for ANGUS McCLAN,<br> +Oh! deep was the grief for that excellent man;<br> +The maids stood aghast at the horrible scene -<br> +Especially ELLEN McJONES ABERDEEN.<br> +<br> +It sorrowed poor PATTISON CORBY TORBAY<br> +To find them “take on” in this serious way;<br> +He pitied the poor little fluttering birds,<br> +And solaced their souls with the following words:<br> +<br> +“Oh, maidens,” said PATTISON, touching his hat,<br> +“Don’t blubber, my dears, for a fellow like that;<br> +Observe, I’m a very superior man,<br> +A much better fellow than ANGUS McCLAN.”<br> +<br> +They smiled when he winked and addressed them as “dears,”<br> +And they all of them vowed, as they dried up their tears,<br> +A pleasanter gentleman never was seen -<br> +Especially ELLEN McJONES ABERDEEN.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: PETER THE WAG.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Policeman PETER FORTH I drag<br> +From his obscure retreat:<br> +He was a merry genial wag,<br> +Who loved a mad conceit.<br> +If he were asked the time of day,<br> +By country bumpkins green,<br> +He not unfrequently would say,<br> +“A quarter past thirteen.”<br> +<br> +If ever you by word of mouth<br> +Inquired of MISTER FORTH<br> +The way to somewhere in the South,<br> +He always sent you North.<br> +With little boys his beat along<br> +He loved to stop and play;<br> +He loved to send old ladies wrong,<br> +And teach their feet to stray.<br> +<br> +He would in frolic moments, when<br> +Such mischief bent upon,<br> +Take Bishops up as betting men -<br> +Bid Ministers move on.<br> +Then all the worthy boys he knew<br> +He regularly licked,<br> +And always collared people who<br> +Had had their pockets picked.<br> +<br> +He was not naturally bad,<br> +Or viciously inclined,<br> +But from his early youth he had<br> +A waggish turn of mind.<br> +The Men of London grimly scowled<br> +With indignation wild;<br> +The Men of London gruffly growled,<br> +But PETER calmly smiled.<br> +<br> +Against this minion of the Crown<br> +The swelling murmurs grew -<br> +From Camberwell to Kentish Town -<br> +From Rotherhithe to Kew.<br> +Still humoured he his wagsome turn,<br> +And fed in various ways<br> +The coward rage that dared to burn,<br> +But did not dare to blaze.<br> +<br> +Still, Retribution has her day,<br> +Although her flight is slow:<br> +<i>One day that Crusher lost his way<br> +Near Poland Street, Soho.<br> +</i>The haughty boy, too proud to ask,<br> +To find his way resolved,<br> +And in the tangle of his task<br> +Got more and more involved.<br> +<br> +The Men of London, overjoyed,<br> +Came there to jeer their foe,<br> +And flocking crowds completely cloyed<br> +The mazes of Soho.<br> +The news on telegraphic wires<br> +Sped swiftly o’er the lea,<br> +Excursion trains from distant shires<br> +Brought myriads to see.<br> +<br> +For weeks he trod his self-made beats<br> +Through Newport- Gerrard- Bear-<br> +Greek- Rupert- Frith- Dean- Poland- Streets,<br> +And into Golden Square.<br> +But all, alas! in vain, for when<br> +He tried to learn the way<br> +Of little boys or grown-up men,<br> +They none of them would say.<br> +<br> +Their eyes would flash - their teeth would grind -<br> +Their lips would tightly curl -<br> +They’d say, “Thy way thyself must find,<br> +Thou misdirecting churl!”<br> +And, similarly, also, when<br> +He tried a foreign friend;<br> +Italians answered, “<i>Il balen</i>” -<br> +The French, “No comprehend.”<br> +<br> +The Russ would say with gleaming eye<br> +“ Sevastopol!” and groan.<br> +The Greek said, Τυπτω, τυπτομαι,<br> +Τυπτω, τυπτειν, +τυπτων.”<br> +To wander thus for many a year<br> +That Crusher never ceased -<br> +The Men of London dropped a tear,<br> +Their anger was appeased<br> +<br> +At length exploring gangs were sent<br> +To find poor FORTH’S remains -<br> +A handsome grant by Parliament<br> +Was voted for their pains.<br> +To seek the poor policeman out<br> +Bold spirits volunteered,<br> +And when they swore they’d solve the doubt,<br> +The Men of London cheered.<br> +<br> +And in a yard, dark, dank, and drear,<br> +They found him, on the floor -<br> +It leads from Richmond Buildings - near<br> +The Royalty stage-door.<br> +With brandy cold and brandy hot<br> +They plied him, starved and wet,<br> +And made him sergeant on the spot -<br> +The Men of London’s pet!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: TO THE TERRESTRIAL GLOBE. BY A MISERABLE WRETCH.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Roll on, thou ball, roll on!<br> +Through pathless realms of Space<br> +Roll on!<br> +What though I’m in a sorry case?<br> +What though I cannot meet my bills?<br> +What though I suffer toothache’s ills?<br> +What though I swallow countless pills?<br> +Never <i>you</i> mind!<br> +Roll on!<br> +<br> +Roll on, thou ball, roll on!<br> +Through seas of inky air<br> +Roll on!<br> +It’s true I’ve got no shirts to wear;<br> +It’s true my butcher’s bill is due;<br> +It’s true my prospects all look blue -<br> +But don’t let that unsettle you!<br> +Never <i>you</i> mind!<br> +Roll on!<br> +<br> +[<i>It rolls on</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: GENTLE ALICE BROWN.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +It was a robber’s daughter, and her name was ALICE BROWN,<br> +Her father was the terror of a small Italian town;<br> +Her mother was a foolish, weak, but amiable old thing;<br> +But it isn’t of her parents that I’m going for to sing.<br> +<br> +As ALICE was a-sitting at her window-sill one day,<br> +A beautiful young gentleman he chanced to pass that way;<br> +She cast her eyes upon him, and he looked so good and true,<br> +That she thought, “I could be happy with a gentleman like you!”<br> +<br> +And every morning passed her house that cream of gentlemen,<br> +She knew she might expect him at a quarter unto ten;<br> +A sorter in the Custom-house, it was his daily road<br> +(The Custom-house was fifteen minutes’ walk from her abode).<br> +<br> +But ALICE was a pious girl, who knew it wasn’t wise<br> +To look at strange young sorters with expressive purple eyes;<br> +So she sought the village priest to whom her family confessed,<br> +The priest by whom their little sins were carefully assessed.<br> +<br> +“Oh, holy father,” ALICE said, “’t would grieve +you, would it not,<br> +To discover that I was a most disreputable lot?<br> +Of all unhappy sinners I’m the most unhappy one!”<br> +The padre said, “Whatever have you been and gone and done?”<br> +<br> +“I have helped mamma to steal a little kiddy from its dad,<br> +I’ve assisted dear papa in cutting up a little lad,<br> +I’ve planned a little burglary and forged a little cheque,<br> +And slain a little baby for the coral on its neck!”<br> +<br> +The worthy pastor heaved a sigh, and dropped a silent tear,<br> +And said, “You mustn’t judge yourself too heavily, my dear:<br> +It’s wrong to murder babies, little corals for to fleece;<br> +But sins like these one expiates at half-a-crown apiece.<br> +<br> +“Girls will be girls - you’re very young, and flighty in +your mind;<br> +Old heads upon young shoulders we must not expect to find:<br> +We mustn’t be too hard upon these little girlish tricks -<br> +Let’s see - five crimes at half-a-crown - exactly twelve-and-six.”<br> +<br> +“Oh, father,” little Alice cried, “your kindness makes +me weep,<br> +You do these little things for me so singularly cheap -<br> +Your thoughtful liberality I never can forget;<br> +But, oh! there is another crime I haven’t mentioned yet!<br> +<br> +“A pleasant-looking gentleman, with pretty purple eyes,<br> +I’ve noticed at my window, as I’ve sat a-catching flies;<br> +He passes by it every day as certain as can be -<br> +I blush to say I’ve winked at him, and he has winked at me!”<br> +<br> +“For shame!” said FATHER PAUL, “my erring daughter! +On my word<br> +This is the most distressing news that I have ever heard.<br> +Why, naughty girl, your excellent papa has pledged your hand<br> +To a promising young robber, the lieutenant of his band!<br> +<br> +“This dreadful piece of news will pain your worthy parents so!<br> +They are the most remunerative customers I know;<br> +For many many years they’ve kept starvation from my doors:<br> +I never knew so criminal a family as yours!<br> +<br> +“The common country folk in this insipid neighbourhood<br> +Have nothing to confess, they’re so ridiculously good;<br> +And if you marry any one respectable at all,<br> +Why, you’ll reform, and what will then become of FATHER PAUL?”<br> +<br> +The worthy priest, he up and drew his cowl upon his crown,<br> +And started off in haste to tell the news to ROBBER BROWN -<br> +To tell him how his daughter, who was now for marriage fit,<br> +Had winked upon a sorter, who reciprocated it.<br> +<br> +Good ROBBER BROWN he muffled up his anger pretty well:<br> +He said, “I have a notion, and that notion I will tell;<br> +I will nab this gay young sorter, terrify him into fits,<br> +And get my gentle wife to chop him into little bits.<br> +<br> +“I’ve studied human nature, and I know a thing or two:<br> +Though a girl may fondly love a living gent, as many do -<br> +A feeling of disgust upon her senses there will fall<br> +When she looks upon his body chopped particularly small.”<br> +<br> +He traced that gallant sorter to a still suburban square;<br> +He watched his opportunity, and seized him unaware;<br> +He took a life-preserver and he hit him on the head,<br> +And MRS. BROWN dissected him before she went to bed.<br> +<br> +And pretty little ALICE grew more settled in her mind,<br> +She never more was guilty of a weakness of the kind,<br> +Until at length good ROBBER BROWN bestowed her pretty hand<br> +On the promising young robber, the lieutenant of his band.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: MISTER WILLIAM.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Oh, listen to the tale of MISTER WILLIAM, if you please,<br> +Whom naughty, naughty judges sent away beyond the seas.<br> +He forged a party’s will, which caused anxiety and strife,<br> +Resulting in his getting penal servitude for life.<br> +<br> +He was a kindly goodly man, and naturally prone,<br> +Instead of taking others’ gold, to give away his own.<br> +But he had heard of Vice, and longed for only once to strike -<br> +To plan <i>one</i> little wickedness - to see what it was like.<br> +<br> +He argued with himself, and said, “A spotless man am I;<br> +I can’t be more respectable, however hard I try!<br> +For six and thirty years I’ve always been as good as gold,<br> +And now for half an hour I’ll plan infamy untold!<br> +<br> +“A baby who is wicked at the early age of one,<br> +And then reforms - and dies at thirty-six a spotless son,<br> +Is never, never saddled with his babyhood’s defect,<br> +But earns from worthy men consideration and respect.<br> +<br> +“So one who never revelled in discreditable tricks<br> +Until he reached the comfortable age of thirty-six,<br> +May then for half an hour perpetrate a deed of shame,<br> +Without incurring permanent disgrace, or even blame.<br> +<br> +“That babies don’t commit such crimes as forgery is true,<br> +But little sins develop, if you leave ’em to accrue;<br> +And he who shuns all vices as successive seasons roll,<br> +Should reap at length the benefit of so much self-control.<br> +<br> +“The common sin of babyhood - objecting to be drest -<br> +If you leave it to accumulate at compound interest,<br> +For anything you know, may represent, if you’re alive,<br> +A burglary or murder at the age of thirty-five.<br> +<br> +“Still, I wouldn’t take advantage of this fact, but be content<br> +With some pardonable folly - it’s a mere experiment.<br> +The greater the temptation to go wrong, the less the sin;<br> +So with something that’s particularly tempting I’ll begin.<br> +<br> +“I would not steal a penny, for my income’s very fair -<br> +I do not want a penny - I have pennies and to spare -<br> +And if I stole a penny from a money-bag or till,<br> +The sin would be enormous - the temptation being <i>nil</i>.<br> +<br> +“But if I broke asunder all such pettifogging bounds,<br> +And forged a party’s Will for (say) Five Hundred Thousand Pounds,<br> +With such an irresistible temptation to a haul,<br> +Of course the sin must be infinitesimally small.<br> +<br> +“There’s WILSON who is dying - he has wealth from Stock +and rent -<br> +If I divert his riches from their natural descent,<br> +I’m placed in a position to indulge each little whim.”<br> +So he diverted them - and they, in turn, diverted him.<br> +<br> +Unfortunately, though, by some unpardonable flaw,<br> +Temptation isn’t recognized by Britain’s Common Law;<br> +Men found him out by some peculiarity of touch,<br> +And WILLIAM got a “lifer,” which annoyed him very much.<br> +<br> +For, ah! he never reconciled himself to life in gaol,<br> +He fretted and he pined, and grew dispirited and pale;<br> +He was numbered like a cabman, too, which told upon him so<br> +That his spirits, once so buoyant, grew uncomfortably low.<br> +<br> +And sympathetic gaolers would remark, “It’s very true,<br> +He ain’t been brought up common, like the likes of me and you.”<br> +So they took him into hospital, and gave him mutton chops,<br> +And chocolate, and arrowroot, and buns, and malt and hops.<br> +<br> +Kind Clergymen, besides, grew interested in his fate,<br> +Affected by the details of his pitiable state.<br> +They waited on the Secretary, somewhere in Whitehall,<br> +Who said he would receive them any day they liked to call.<br> +<br> +“Consider, sir, the hardship of this interesting case:<br> +A prison life brings with it something very like disgrace;<br> +It’s telling on young WILLIAM, who’s reduced to skin and +bone -<br> +Remember he’s a gentleman, with money of his own.<br> +<br> +“He had an ample income, and of course he stands in need<br> +Of sherry with his dinner, and his customary weed;<br> +No delicacies now can pass his gentlemanly lips -<br> +He misses his sea-bathing and his continental trips.<br> +<br> +“He says the other prisoners are commonplace and rude;<br> +He says he cannot relish uncongenial prison food.<br> +When quite a boy they taught him to distinguish Good from Bad,<br> +And other educational advantages he’s had.<br> +<br> +“A burglar or garotter, or, indeed, a common thief<br> +Is very glad to batten on potatoes and on beef,<br> +Or anything, in short, that prison kitchens can afford, -<br> +A cut above the diet in a common workhouse ward.<br> +<br> +“But beef and mutton-broth don’t seem to suit our WILLIAM’S +whim,<br> +A boon to other prisoners - a punishment to him.<br> +It never was intended that the discipline of gaol<br> +Should dash a convict’s spirits, sir, or make him thin or pale.”<br> +<br> +“Good Gracious Me!” that sympathetic Secretary cried,<br> +“Suppose in prison fetters MISTER WILLIAM should have died!<br> +Dear me, of course! Imprisonment for <i>Life</i> his sentence +saith:<br> +I’m very glad you mentioned it - it might have been For Death!<br> +<br> +“Release him with a ticket - he’ll be better then, no doubt,<br> +And tell him I apologize.” So MISTER WILLIAM’S out.<br> +I hope he will be careful in his manuscripts, I’m sure,<br> +And not begin experimentalizing any more.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: THE BUMBOAT WOMAN’S STORY.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I’m old, my dears, and shrivelled with age, and work, and grief,<br> +My eyes are gone, and my teeth have been drawn by Time, the Thief!<br> +For terrible sights I’ve seen, and dangers great I’ve run +-<br> +I’m nearly seventy now, and my work is almost done!<br> +<br> +Ah! I’ve been young in my time, and I’ve played the +deuce with men!<br> +I’m speaking of ten years past - I was barely sixty then:<br> +My cheeks were mellow and soft, and my eyes were large and sweet,<br> +POLL PINEAPPLE’S eyes were the standing toast of the Royal Fleet!<br> +<br> +A bumboat woman was I, and I faithfully served the ships<br> +With apples and cakes, and fowls, and beer, and halfpenny dips,<br> +And beef for the generous mess, where the officers dine at nights,<br> +And fine fresh peppermint drops for the rollicking midshipmites.<br> +<br> +Of all the kind commanders who anchored in Portsmouth Bay,<br> +By far the sweetest of all was kind LIEUTENANT BELAYE.’<br> +LIEUTENANT BELAYE commanded the gunboat <i>Hot Cross Bun,<br> +</i>She was seven and thirty feet in length, and she carried a gun.<br> +<br> +With a laudable view of enhancing his country’s naval pride,<br> +When people inquired her size, LIEUTENANT BELAYE replied,<br> +“Oh, my ship, my ship is the first of the Hundred and Seventy-ones!”<br> +Which meant her tonnage, but people imagined it meant her guns.<br> +<br> +Whenever I went on board he would beckon me down below,<br> +“Come down, Little Buttercup, come” (for he loved to call +me so),<br> +And he’d tell of the fights at sea in which he’d taken a +part,<br> +And so LIEUTENANT BELAYE won poor POLL PINEAPPLE’S heart!<br> +<br> +But at length his orders came, and he said one day, said he,<br> +“I’m ordered to sail with the <i>Hot Cross Bun</i> to the +German Sea.”<br> +And the Portsmouth maidens wept when they learnt the evil day,<br> +For every Portsmouth maid loved good LIEUTENANT BELAYE.<br> +<br> +And I went to a back back street, with plenty of cheap cheap shops,<br> +And I bought an oilskin hat and a second-hand suit of slops,<br> +And I went to LIEUTENANT BELAYE (and he never suspected <i>me</i>!)<br> +And I entered myself as a chap as wanted to go to sea.<br> +<br> +We sailed that afternoon at the mystic hour of one, -<br> +Remarkably nice young men were the crew of the <i>Hot Cross Bun,<br> +</i>I’m sorry to say that I’ve heard that sailors sometimes +swear,<br> +But I never yet heard a <i>Bun</i> say anything wrong, I declare.<br> +<br> +When Jack Tars meet, they meet with a “Messmate, ho! What +cheer?”<br> +But here, on the <i>Hot Cross Bun</i>, it was “How do you do, +my dear?”<br> +When Jack Tars growl, I believe they growl with a big big D-<br> +But the strongest oath of the <i>Hot Cross Buns</i> was a mild “Dear +me!”<br> +<br> +Yet, though they were all well-bred, you could scarcely call them slick:<br> +Whenever a sea was on, they were all extremely sick;<br> +And whenever the weather was calm, and the wind was light and fair,<br> +They spent more time than a sailor should on his back back hair.<br> +<br> +They certainly shivered and shook when ordered aloft to run,<br> +And they screamed when LIEUTENANT BELAYE discharged his only gun.<br> +And as he was proud of his gun - such pride is hardly wrong -<br> +The Lieutenant was blazing away at intervals all day long.<br> +<br> +They all agreed very well, though at times you heard it said<br> +That BILL had a way of his own of making his lips look red -<br> +That JOE looked quite his age - or somebody might declare<br> +That BARNACLE’S long pig-tail was never his own own hair.<br> +<br> +BELAYE would admit that his men were of no great use to him,<br> +“But, then,” he would say, “there is little to do +on a gunboat trim<br> +I can hand, and reef, and steer, and fire my big gun too -<br> +And it <i>is</i> such a treat to sail with a gentle well-bred crew.”<br> +<br> +I saw him every day. How the happy moments sped!<br> +Reef topsails! Make all taut! There’s dirty weather +ahead!<br> +(I do not mean that tempests threatened the <i>Hot Cross Bun:<br> +</i>In <i>that</i> case, I don’t know whatever we <i>should</i> +have done!)<br> +<br> +After a fortnight’s cruise, we put into port one day,<br> +And off on leave for a week went kind LIEUTENANT BELAYE,<br> +And after a long long week had passed (and it seemed like a life),<br> +LIEUTENANT BELAYE returned to his ship with a fair young wife!<br> +<br> +He up, and he says, says he, “O crew of the <i>Hot Cross Bun</i>,<br> +Here is the wife of my heart, for the Church has made us one!”<br> +And as he uttered the word, the crew went out of their wits,<br> +And all fell down in so many separate fainting-fits.<br> +<br> +And then their hair came down, or off, as the case might be,<br> +And lo! the rest of the crew were simple girls, like me,<br> +Who all had fled from their homes in a sailor’s blue array,<br> +To follow the shifting fate of kind LIEUTENANT BELAYE.<br> +<br> +* * * * * * * *<br> +<br> +It’s strange to think that <i>I</i> should ever have loved young +men,<br> +But I’m speaking of ten years past - I was barely sixty then,<br> +And now my cheeks are furrowed with grief and age, I trow!<br> +And poor POLL PINEAPPLE’S eyes have lost their lustre now!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: LOST MR. BLAKE.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +MR. BLAKE was a regular out-and-out hardened sinner,<br> +Who was quite out of the pale of Christianity, so to speak,<br> +He was in the habit of smoking a long pipe and drinking a glass of grog +on a Sunday after dinner,<br> +And seldom thought of going to church more than twice or - if Good Friday +or Christmas Day happened to come in it - three times a week.<br> +<br> +He was quite indifferent as to the particular kinds of dresses<br> +That the clergyman wore at church where he used to go to pray,<br> +And whatever he did in the way of relieving a chap’s distresses,<br> +He always did in a nasty, sneaking, underhanded, hole-and-corner sort +of way.<br> +<br> +I have known him indulge in profane, ungentlemanly emphatics,<br> +When the Protestant Church has been divided on the subject of the proper +width of a chasuble’s hem;<br> +I have even known him to sneer at albs - and as for dalmatics,<br> +Words can’t convey an idea of the contempt he expressed for <i>them.<br> +<br> +</i>He didn’t believe in persons who, not being well off themselves, +are obliged to confine their charitable exertions to collecting money +from wealthier people,<br> +And looked upon individuals of the former class as ecclesiastical hawks;<br> +He used to say that he would no more think of interfering with his priest’s +robes than with his church or his steeple,<br> +And that he did not consider his soul imperilled because somebody over +whom he had no influence whatever, chose to dress himself up like an +exaggerated GUY FAWKES.<br> +<br> +This shocking old vagabond was so unutterably shameless<br> +That he actually went a-courting a very respectable and pious middle-aged +sister, by the name of BIGGS.<br> +She was a rather attractive widow, whose life as such had always been +particularly blameless;<br> +Her first husband had left her a secure but moderate competence, owing +to some fortunate speculations in the matter of figs.<br> +<br> +She was an excellent person in every way - and won the respect even +of MRS. GRUNDY,<br> +She was a good housewife, too, and wouldn’t have wasted a penny +if she had owned the Koh-i-noor.<br> +She was just as strict as he was lax in her observance of Sunday,<br> +And being a good economist, and charitable besides, she took all the +bones and cold potatoes and broken pie-crusts and candle-ends (when +she had quite done with them), and made them into an excellent soup +for the deserving poor.<br> +<br> +I am sorry to say that she rather took to BLAKE - that outcast of society,<br> +And when respectable brothers who were fond of her began to look dubious +and to cough,<br> +She would say, “Oh, my friends, it’s because I hope to bring +this poor benighted soul back to virtue and propriety,<br> +And besides, the poor benighted soul, with all his faults, was uncommonly +well off.<br> +<br> +And when MR. BLAKE’S dissipated friends called his attention to +the frown or the pout of her,<br> +Whenever he did anything which appeared to her to savour of an unmentionable +place,<br> +He would say that “she would be a very decent old girl when all +that nonsense was knocked out of her,”<br> +And his method of knocking it out of her is one that covered him with +disgrace.<br> +<br> +She was fond of going to church services four times every Sunday, and, +four or five times in the week, and never seemed to pall of them,<br> +So he hunted out all the churches within a convenient distance that +had services at different hours, so to speak;<br> +And when he had married her he positively insisted upon their going +to all of them,<br> +So they contrived to do about twelve churches every Sunday, and, if +they had luck, from twenty-two to twenty-three in the course of the +week.<br> +<br> +She was fond of dropping his sovereigns ostentatiously into the plate, +and she liked to see them stand out rather conspicuously against the +commonplace half-crowns and shillings,<br> +So he took her to all the charity sermons, and if by any extraordinary +chance there wasn’t a charity sermon anywhere, he would drop a +couple of sovereigns (one for him and one for her) into the poor-box +at the door;<br> +And as he always deducted the sums thus given in charity from the housekeeping +money, and the money he allowed her for her bonnets and frillings,<br> +She soon began to find that even charity, if you allow it to interfere +with your personal luxuries, becomes an intolerable bore.<br> +<br> +On Sundays she was always melancholy and anything but good society,<br> +For that day in her household was a day of sighings and sobbings and +wringing of hands and shaking of heads:<br> +She wouldn’t hear of a button being sewn on a glove, because it +was a work neither of necessity nor of piety,<br> +And strictly prohibited her servants from amusing themselves, or indeed +doing anything at all except dusting the drawing-rooms, cleaning the +boots and shoes, cooking the parlour dinner, waiting generally on the +family, and making the beds.<br> +But BLAKE even went further than that, and said that people should do +their own works of necessity, and not delegate them to persons in a +menial situation,<br> +So he wouldn’t allow his servants to do so much as even answer +a bell.<br> +Here he is making his wife carry up the water for her bath to the second +floor, much against her inclination, -<br> +And why in the world the gentleman who illustrates these ballads has +put him in a cocked hat is more than I can tell.<br> +<br> +After about three months of this sort of thing, taking the smooth with +the rough of it,<br> +(Blacking her own boots and peeling her own potatoes was not her notion +of connubial bliss),<br> +MRS. BLAKE began to find that she had pretty nearly had enough of it,<br> +And came, in course of time, to think that BLAKE’S own original +line of conduct wasn’t so much amiss.<br> +<br> +And now that wicked person - that detestable sinner (“BELIAL BLAKE” +his friends and well-wishers call him for his atrocities),<br> +And his poor deluded victim, whom all her Christian brothers dislike +and pity so,<br> +Go to the parish church only on Sunday morning and afternoon and occasionally +on a week-day, and spend their evenings in connubial fondlings and affectionate +reciprocities,<br> +And I should like to know where in the world (or rather, out of it) +they expect to go!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: THE BABY’S VENGEANCE.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Weary at heart and extremely ill<br> +Was PALEY VOLLAIRE of Bromptonville,<br> +In a dirty lodging, with fever down,<br> +Close to the Polygon, Somers Town.<br> +<br> +PALEY VOLLAIRE was an only son<br> +(For why? His mother had had but one),<br> +And PALEY inherited gold and grounds<br> +Worth several hundred thousand pounds.<br> +<br> +But he, like many a rich young man,<br> +Through this magnificent fortune ran,<br> +And nothing was left for his daily needs<br> +But duplicate copies of mortgage-deeds.<br> +<br> +Shabby and sorry and sorely sick,<br> +He slept, and dreamt that the clock’s “tick, tick,”<br> +Was one of the Fates, with a long sharp knife,<br> +Snicking off bits of his shortened life.<br> +<br> +He woke and counted the pips on the walls,<br> +The outdoor passengers’ loud footfalls,<br> +And reckoned all over, and reckoned again,<br> +The little white tufts on his counterpane.<br> +<br> +A medical man to his bedside came.<br> +(I can’t remember that doctor’s name),<br> +And said, “You’ll die in a very short while<br> +If you don’t set sail for Madeira’s isle.”<br> +<br> +“Go to Madeira? goodness me!<br> +I haven’t the money to pay your fee!”<br> +“Then, PALEY VOLLAIRE,” said the leech, “good bye;<br> +I’ll come no more, for your’re sure to die.”<br> +<br> +He sighed and he groaned and smote his breast;<br> +“Oh, send,” said he, “for FREDERICK WEST,<br> +Ere senses fade or my eyes grow dim:<br> +I’ve a terrible tale to whisper him!”<br> +<br> +Poor was FREDERICK’S lot in life, -<br> +A dustman he with a fair young wife,<br> +A worthy man with a hard-earned store,<br> +A hundred and seventy pounds - or more.<br> +<br> +FREDERICK came, and he said, “Maybe<br> +You’ll say what you happened to want with me?”<br> +“Wronged boy,” said PALEY VOLLAIRE, “I will,<br> +But don’t you fidget yourself - sit still.”<br> +<br> +<br> +THE TERRIBLE TALE.<br> +<br> +<br> +“’Tis now some thirty-seven years ago<br> +Since first began the plot that I’m revealing,<br> +A fine young woman, whom you ought to know,<br> +Lived with her husband down in Drum Lane, Ealing.<br> +Herself by means of mangling reimbursing,<br> +And now and then (at intervals) wet-nursing.<br> +<br> +“Two little babes dwelt in their humble cot:<br> +One was her own - the other only lent to her:<br> +<i>Her own she slighted</i>. Tempted by a lot<br> +Of gold and silver regularly sent to her,<br> +She ministered unto the little other<br> +In the capacity of foster-mother.<br> +<br> +“<i>I was her own</i>. Oh! how I lay and sobbed<br> +In my poor cradle - deeply, deeply cursing<br> +The rich man’s pampered bantling, who had robbed<br> +My only birthright - an attentive nursing!<br> +Sometimes in hatred of my foster-brother,<br> +I gnashed my gums - which terrified my mother.<br> +<br> +“One day - it was quite early in the week -<br> +I <i>in</i> MY <i>cradle having placed the bantling</i> -<br> +Crept into his! He had not learnt to speak,<br> +But I could see his face with anger mantling.<br> +It was imprudent - well, disgraceful maybe,<br> +For, oh! I was a bad, blackhearted baby!<br> +<br> +“So great a luxury was food, I think<br> +No wickedness but I was game to try for it.<br> +<i>Now</i> if I wanted anything to drink<br> +At any time, I only had to cry for it!<br> +<i>Once</i>, if I dared to weep, the bottle lacking,<br> +My blubbering involved a serious smacking!<br> +<br> +“We grew up in the usual way - my friend,<br> +My foster-brother, daily growing thinner,<br> +While gradually I began to mend,<br> +And thrived amazingly on double dinner.<br> +And every one, besides my foster-mother,<br> +Believed that either of us was the other.<br> +<br> +“I came into <i>his</i> wealth - I bore <i>his</i> name,<br> +I bear it still - <i>his</i> property I squandered -<br> +I mortgaged everything - and now (oh, shame!)<br> +Into a Somers Town shake-down I’ve wandered!<br> +I am no PALEY - no, VOLLAIRE - it’s true, my boy!<br> +The only rightful PALEY V. is <i>you</i>, my boy!<br> +<br> +“And all I have is yours - and yours is mine.<br> +I still may place you in your true position:<br> +Give me the pounds you’ve saved, and I’ll resign<br> +My noble name, my rank, and my condition.<br> +So far my wickedness in falsely owning<br> +Your vasty wealth, I am at last atoning!”<br> +<br> +* * * * * * *<br> +<br> +FREDERICK he was a simple soul,<br> +He pulled from his pocket a bulky roll,<br> +And gave to PALEY his hard-earned store,<br> +A hundred and seventy pounds or more.<br> +<br> +PALEY VOLLAIRE, with many a groan,<br> +Gave FREDERICK all that he called his own, -<br> +Two shirts and a sock, and a vest of jean,<br> +A Wellington boot and a bamboo cane.<br> +<br> +And FRED (entitled to all things there)<br> +He took the fever from MR. VOLLAIRE,<br> +Which killed poor FREDERICK WEST. Meanwhile<br> +VOLLAIRE sailed off to Madeira’s isle.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: THE CAPTAIN AND THE MERMAIDS.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I sing a legend of the sea,<br> +So hard-a-port upon your lee!<br> +A ship on starboard tack!<br> +She’s bound upon a private cruise -<br> +(This is the kind of spice I use<br> +To give a salt-sea smack).<br> +<br> +Behold, on every afternoon<br> +(Save in a gale or strong Monsoon)<br> +Great CAPTAIN CAPEL CLEGGS<br> +(Great morally, though rather short)<br> +Sat at an open weather-port<br> +And aired his shapely legs.<br> +<br> +And Mermaids hung around in flocks,<br> +On cable chains and distant rocks,<br> +To gaze upon those limbs;<br> +For legs like those, of flesh and bone,<br> +Are things “not generally known”<br> +To any Merman TIMBS.<br> +<br> +But Mermen didn’t seem to care<br> +Much time (as far as I’m aware)<br> +With CLEGGS’S legs to spend;<br> +Though Mermaids swam around all day<br> +And gazed, exclaiming, “<i>That’s</i> the way<br> +A gentleman should end!<br> +<br> +“A pair of legs with well-cut knees,<br> +And calves and ankles such as these<br> +Which we in rapture hail,<br> +Are far more eloquent, it’s clear<br> +(When clothed in silk and kerseymere),<br> +Than any nasty tail.”<br> +<br> +And CLEGGS - a worthy kind old boy -<br> +Rejoiced to add to others’ joy,<br> +And, when the day was dry,<br> +Because it pleased the lookers-on,<br> +He sat from morn till night - though con-<br> +Stitutionally shy.<br> +<br> +At first the Mermen laughed, “Pooh! pooh!”<br> +But finally they jealous grew,<br> +And sounded loud recalls;<br> +But vainly. So these fishy males<br> +Declared they too would clothe their tails<br> +In silken hose and smalls.<br> +<br> +They set to work, these water-men,<br> +And made their nether robes - but when<br> +They drew with dainty touch<br> +The kerseymere upon their tails,<br> +They found it scraped against their scales,<br> +And hurt them very much.<br> +<br> +The silk, besides, with which they chose<br> +To deck their tails by way of hose<br> +(They never thought of shoon),<br> +For such a use was much too thin, -<br> +It tore against the caudal fin,<br> +And “went in ladders” soon.<br> +<br> +So they designed another plan:<br> +They sent their most seductive man<br> +This note to him to show -<br> +“Our Monarch sends to CAPTAIN CLEGGS<br> +His humble compliments, and begs<br> +He’ll join him down below;<br> +<br> +“We’ve pleasant homes below the sea -<br> +Besides, if CAPTAIN CLEGGS should be<br> +(As our advices say)<br> +A judge of Mermaids, he will find<br> +Our lady-fish of every kind<br> +Inspection will repay.”<br> +<br> +Good CAPEL sent a kind reply,<br> +For CAPEL thought he could descry<br> +An admirable plan<br> +To study all their ways and laws -<br> +(But not their lady-fish, because<br> +He was a married man).<br> +<br> +The Merman sank - the Captain too<br> +Jumped overboard, and dropped from view<br> +Like stone from catapult;<br> +And when he reached the Merman’s lair,<br> +He certainly was welcomed there,<br> +But, ah! with what result?<br> +<br> +They didn’t let him learn their law,<br> +Or make a note of what he saw,<br> +Or interesting mem.:<br> +The lady-fish he couldn’t find,<br> +But that, of course, he didn’t mind -<br> +He didn’t come for them.<br> +<br> +For though, when CAPTAIN CAPEL sank,<br> +The Mermen drawn in double rank<br> +Gave him a hearty hail,<br> +Yet when secure of CAPTAIN CLEGGS,<br> +They cut off both his lovely legs,<br> +And gave him <i>such</i> a tail!<br> +<br> +When CAPTAIN CLEGGS returned aboard,<br> +His blithesome crew convulsive roar’d,<br> +To see him altered so.<br> +The Admiralty did insist<br> +That he upon the Half-pay List<br> +Immediately should go.<br> +<br> +In vain declared the poor old salt,<br> +“It’s my misfortune - not my fault,”<br> +With tear and trembling lip -<br> +In vain poor CAPEL begged and begged.<br> +“A man must be completely legged<br> +Who rules a British ship.”<br> +<br> +So spake the stern First Lord aloud -<br> +He was a wag, though very proud,<br> +And much rejoiced to say,<br> +“You’re only half a captain now -<br> +And so, my worthy friend, I vow<br> +You’ll only get half-pay!”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: ANNIE PROTHEROE. A LEGEND OF STRATFORD-LE-BOW.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Oh! listen to the tale of little ANNIE PROTHEROE.<br> +She kept a small post-office in the neighbourhood of BOW;<br> +She loved a skilled mechanic, who was famous in his day -<br> +A gentle executioner whose name was GILBERT CLAY.<br> +<br> +I think I hear you say, “A dreadful subject for your rhymes!”<br> +O reader, do not shrink - he didn’t live in modern times!<br> +He lived so long ago (the sketch will show it at a glance)<br> +That all his actions glitter with the lime-light of Romance.<br> +<br> +In busy times he laboured at his gentle craft all day -<br> +“No doubt you mean his Cal-craft,” you amusingly will say +-<br> +But, no - he didn’t operate with common bits of string,<br> +He was a Public Headsman, which is quite another thing.<br> +<br> +And when his work was over, they would ramble o’er the lea,<br> +And sit beneath the frondage of an elderberry tree,<br> +And ANNIE’S simple prattle entertained him on his walk,<br> +For public executions formed the subject of her talk.<br> +<br> +And sometimes he’d explain to her, which charmed her very much,<br> +How famous operators vary very much in touch,<br> +And then, perhaps, he’d show how he himself performed the trick,<br> +And illustrate his meaning with a poppy and a stick.<br> +<br> +Or, if it rained, the little maid would stop at home, and look<br> +At his favourable notices, all pasted in a book,<br> +And then her cheek would flush - her swimming eyes would dance with +joy<br> +In a glow of admiration at the prowess of her boy.<br> +<br> +One summer eve, at supper-time, the gentle GILBERT said<br> +(As he helped his pretty ANNIE to a slice of collared head),<br> +“This reminds me I must settle on the next ensuing day<br> +The hash of that unmitigated villain PETER GRAY.”<br> +<br> +He saw his ANNIE tremble and he saw his ANNIE start,<br> +Her changing colour trumpeted the flutter at her heart;<br> +Young GILBERT’S manly bosom rose and sank with jealous fear,<br> +And he said, “O gentle ANNIE, what’s the meaning of this +here?”<br> +<br> +And ANNIE answered, blushing in an interesting way,<br> +“You think, no doubt, I’m sighing for that felon PETER GRAY:<br> +That I was his young woman is unquestionably true,<br> +But not since I began a-keeping company with you.”<br> +<br> +Then GILBERT, who was irritable, rose and loudly swore<br> +He’d know the reason why if she refused to tell him more;<br> +And she answered (all the woman in her flashing from her eyes)<br> +“You mustn’t ask no questions, and you won’t be told +no lies!<br> +<br> +“Few lovers have the privilege enjoyed, my dear, by you,<br> +Of chopping off a rival’s head and quartering him too!<br> +Of vengeance, dear, to-morrow you will surely take your fill!”<br> +And GILBERT ground his molars as he answered her, “I will!”<br> +<br> +Young GILBERT rose from table with a stern determined look,<br> +And, frowning, took an inexpensive hatchet from its hook;<br> +And ANNIE watched his movements with an interested air -<br> +For the morrow - for the morrow he was going to prepare!<br> +<br> +He chipped it with a hammer and he chopped it with a bill,<br> +He poured sulphuric acid on the edge of it, until<br> +This terrible Avenger of the Majesty of Law<br> +Was far less like a hatchet than a dissipated saw.<br> +<br> +And ANNIE said, “O GILBERT, dear, I do not understand<br> +Why ever you are injuring that hatchet in your hand?’<br> +He said, “It is intended for to lacerate and flay<br> +The neck of that unmitigated villain PETER GRAY!”<br> +<br> +“Now, GILBERT,” ANNIE answered, “wicked headsman, +just beware -<br> +I won’t have PETER tortured with that horrible affair;<br> +If you appear with that, you may depend you’ll rue the day.”<br> +But GILBERT said, “Oh, shall I?” which was just his nasty +way.<br> +<br> +He saw a look of anger from her eyes distinctly dart,<br> +For ANNIE was a woman, and had pity in her heart!<br> +She wished him a good evening - he answered with a glare;<br> +She only said, “Remember, for your ANNIE will be there!”<br> +<br> +* * * * * * * *<br> +<br> +The morrow GILBERT boldly on the scaffold took his stand,<br> +With a vizor on his face and with a hatchet in his hand,<br> +And all the people noticed that the Engine of the Law<br> +Was far less like a hatchet than a dissipated saw.<br> +<br> +The felon very coolly loosed his collar and his stock,<br> +And placed his wicked head upon the handy little block.<br> +The hatchet was uplifted for to settle PETER GRAY,<br> +When GILBERT plainly heard a woman’s voice exclaiming, “Stay!”<br> +<br> +’Twas ANNIE, gentle ANNIE, as you’ll easily believe.<br> +“O GILBERT, you must spare him, for I bring him a reprieve,<br> +It came from our Home Secretary many weeks ago,<br> +And passed through that post-office which I used to keep at Bow.<br> +<br> +“I loved you, loved you madly, and you know it, GILBERT CLAY,<br> +And as I’d quite surrendered all idea of PETER GRAY,<br> +I quietly suppressed it, as you’ll clearly understand,<br> +For I thought it might be awkward if he came and claimed my hand.<br> +<br> +“In anger at my secret (which I could not tell before),<br> +To lacerate poor PETER GRAY vindictively you swore;<br> +I told you if you used that blunted axe you’d rue the day,<br> +And so you will, young GILBERT, for I’ll marry PETER GRAY!”<br> +<br> +[<i>And so she did.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +</i>Ballad: AN UNFORTUNATE LIKENESS.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I’ve painted SHAKESPEARE all my life -<br> +“An infant” (even then at “play”!)<br> +“A boy,” with stage-ambition rife,<br> +Then “Married to ANN HATHAWAY.”<br> +<br> +“The bard’s first ticket night” (or “ben.”),<br> +His “First appearance on the stage,”<br> +His “Call before the curtain” - then<br> +“Rejoicings when he came of age.”<br> +<br> +The bard play-writing in his room,<br> +The bard a humble lawyer’s clerk.<br> +The bard a lawyer <a name="citation3"></a><a href="#footnote3">{3}</a> +- parson <a name="citation4"></a><a href="#footnote4">{4}</a> - groom +<a name="citation5"></a><a href="#footnote5">{5}</a> -<br> +The bard deer-stealing, after dark.<br> +<br> +The bard a tradesman <a name="citation6"></a><a href="#footnote6">{6}</a> +- and a Jew <a name="citation7"></a><a href="#footnote7">{7}</a> -<br> +The bard a botanist <a name="citation8"></a><a href="#footnote8">{8}</a> +- a beak <a name="citation9"></a><a href="#footnote9">{9}</a> -<br> +The bard a skilled musician <a name="citation10"></a><a href="#footnote10">{10}</a> +too -<br> +A sheriff <a name="citation11"></a><a href="#footnote11">{11}</a> and +a surgeon <a name="citation12"></a><a href="#footnote12">{12}</a> eke!<br> +<br> +Yet critics say (a friendly stock)<br> +That, though it’s evident I try,<br> +Yet even <i>I</i> can barely mock<br> +The glimmer of his wondrous eye!<br> +<br> +One morning as a work I framed,<br> +There passed a person, walking hard:<br> +“My gracious goodness,” I exclaimed,<br> +“How very like my dear old bard!<br> +<br> +“Oh, what a model he would make!”<br> +I rushed outside - impulsive me! -<br> +“Forgive the liberty I take,<br> +But you’re so very” - “Stop!” said he.<br> +<br> +“You needn’t waste your breath or time, -<br> +I know what you are going to say, -<br> +That you’re an artist, and that I’m<br> +Remarkably like SHAKESPEARE. Eh?<br> +<br> +“You wish that I would sit to you?”<br> +I clasped him madly round the waist,<br> +And breathlessly replied, “I do!”<br> +“All right,” said he, “but please make haste.”<br> +<br> +I led him by his hallowed sleeve,<br> +And worked away at him apace,<br> +I painted him till dewy eve, -<br> +There never was a nobler face!<br> +<br> +“Oh, sir,” I said, “a fortune grand<br> +Is yours, by dint of merest chance, -<br> +To sport <i>his</i> brow at second-hand,<br> +To wear <i>his</i> cast-off countenance!<br> +<br> +“To rub <i>his</i> eyes whene’er they ache -<br> +To wear <i>his</i> baldness ere you’re old -<br> +To clean <i>his</i> teeth when you awake -<br> +To blow <i>his</i> nose when you’ve a cold!”<br> +<br> +His eyeballs glistened in his eyes -<br> +I sat and watched and smoked my pipe;<br> +“Bravo!” I said, “I recognize<br> +The phrensy of your prototype!”<br> +<br> +His scanty hair he wildly tore:<br> +“That’s right,” said I, “it shows your breed.”<br> +He danced - he stamped - he wildly swore -<br> +“Bless me, that’s very fine indeed!”<br> +<br> +“Sir,” said the grand Shakesperian boy<br> +(Continuing to blaze away),<br> +“You think my face a source of joy;<br> +That shows you know not what you say.<br> +<br> +“Forgive these yells and cellar-flaps:<br> +I’m always thrown in some such state<br> +When on his face well-meaning chaps<br> +This wretched man congratulate.<br> +<br> +“For, oh! this face - this pointed chin -<br> +This nose - this brow - these eyeballs too,<br> +Have always been the origin<br> +Of all the woes I ever knew!<br> +<br> +“If to the play my way I find,<br> +To see a grand Shakesperian piece,<br> +I have no rest, no ease of mind<br> +Until the author’s puppets cease.<br> +<br> +“Men nudge each other - thus - and say,<br> +‘This certainly is SHAKESPEARE’S son,’<br> +And merry wags (of course in play)<br> +Cry ‘Author!’ when the piece is done.<br> +<br> +“In church the people stare at me,<br> +Their soul the sermon never binds;<br> +I catch them looking round to see,<br> +And thoughts of SHAKESPEARE fill their minds.<br> +<br> +“And sculptors, fraught with cunning wile,<br> +Who find it difficult to crown<br> +A bust with BROWN’S insipid smile,<br> +Or TOMKINS’S unmannered frown,<br> +<br> +“Yet boldly make my face their own,<br> +When (oh, presumption!) they require<br> +To animate a paving-stone<br> +With SHAKESPEARE’S intellectual fire.<br> +<br> +“At parties where young ladies gaze,<br> +And I attempt to speak my joy,<br> +‘Hush, pray,’ some lovely creature says,<br> +‘The fond illusion don’t destroy!’<br> +<br> +“Whene’er I speak, my soul is wrung<br> +With these or some such whisperings:<br> +‘’Tis pity that a SHAKESPEARE’S tongue<br> +Should say such un-Shakesperian things!’<br> +<br> +“I should not thus be criticised<br> +Had I a face of common wont:<br> +Don’t envy me - now, be advised!”<br> +And, now I think of it, I don’t!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: THE KING OF CANOODLE-DUM.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +The story of FREDERICK GOWLER,<br> +A mariner of the sea,<br> +Who quitted his ship, the <i>Howler,<br> +</i>A-sailing in Caribbee.<br> +For many a day he wandered,<br> +Till he met in a state of rum<br> +CALAMITY POP VON PEPPERMINT DROP,<br> +The King of Canoodle-Dum.<br> +<br> +That monarch addressed him gaily,<br> +“Hum! Golly de do to-day?<br> +Hum! Lily-white Buckra Sailee” -<br> +(You notice his playful way?) -<br> +“What dickens you doin’ here, sar?<br> +Why debbil you want to come?<br> +Hum! Picaninnee, dere isn’t no sea<br> +In City Canoodle-Dum!”<br> +<br> +And GOWLER he answered sadly,<br> +“Oh, mine is a doleful tale!<br> +They’ve treated me werry badly<br> +In Lunnon, from where I hail.<br> +I’m one of the Family Royal -<br> +No common Jack Tar you see;<br> +I’m WILLIAM THE FOURTH, far up in the North,<br> +A King in my own countree!”<br> +<br> +Bang-bang! How the tom-toms thundered!<br> +Bang-bang! How they thumped this gongs!<br> +Bang-bang! How the people wondered!<br> +Bang-bang! At it hammer and tongs!<br> +Alliance with Kings of Europe<br> +Is an honour Canoodlers seek,<br> +Her monarchs don’t stop with PEPPERMINT DROP<br> +Every day in the week!<br> +<br> +FRED told them that he was undone,<br> +For his people all went insane,<br> +And fired the Tower of London,<br> +And Grinnidge’s Naval Fane.<br> +And some of them racked St. James’s,<br> +And vented their rage upon<br> +The Church of St. Paul, the Fishmongers’ Hall,<br> +And the Angel at Islington.<br> +<br> +CALAMITY POP implored him<br> +In his capital to remain<br> +Till those people of his restored him<br> +To power and rank again.<br> +CALAMITY POP he made him<br> +A Prince of Canoodle-Dum,<br> +With a couple of caves, some beautiful slaves,<br> +And the run of the royal rum.<br> +<br> +Pop gave him his only daughter,<br> +HUM PICKETY WIMPLE TIP:<br> +FRED vowed that if over the water<br> +He went, in an English ship,<br> +He’d make her his Queen, - though truly<br> +It is an unusual thing<br> +For a Caribbee brat who’s as black as your hat<br> +To be wife of an English King.<br> +<br> +And all the Canoodle-Dummers<br> +They copied his rolling walk,<br> +His method of draining rummers,<br> +His emblematical talk.<br> +For his dress and his graceful breeding,<br> +His delicate taste in rum,<br> +And his nautical way, were the talk of the day<br> +In the Court of Canoodle-Dum.<br> +<br> +CALAMITY POP most wisely<br> +Determined in everything<br> +To model his Court precisely<br> +On that of the English King;<br> +And ordered that every lady<br> +And every lady’s lord<br> +Should masticate jacky (a kind of tobaccy),<br> +And scatter its juice abroad.<br> +<br> +They signified wonder roundly<br> +At any astounding yarn,<br> +By darning their dear eyes roundly<br> +(‘T was all they had to darn).<br> +They “hoisted their slacks,” adjusting<br> +Garments of plantain-leaves<br> +With nautical twitches (as if they wore breeches,<br> +Instead of a dress like EVE’S!)<br> +<br> +They shivered their timbers proudly,<br> +At a phantom forelock dragged,<br> +And called for a hornpipe loudly<br> +Whenever amusement flagged.<br> +“Hum! Golly! him POP resemble,<br> +Him Britisher sov’reign, hum!<br> +CALAMITY POP VON PEPPERMINT DROP,<br> +De King of Canoodle-Dum!”<br> +<br> +The mariner’s lively “Hollo!”<br> +Enlivened Canoodle’s plain<br> +(For blessings unnumbered follow<br> +In Civilization’s train).<br> +But Fortune, who loves a bathos,<br> +A terrible ending planned,<br> +For ADMIRAL D. CHICKABIDDY, C.B.,<br> +Placed foot on Canoodle land!<br> +<br> +That rebel, he seized KING GOWLER,<br> +He threatened his royal brains,<br> +And put him aboard the <i>Howler,<br> +</i>And fastened him down with chains.<br> +The <i>Howler</i> she weighed her anchor,<br> +With FREDERICK nicely nailed,<br> +And off to the North with WILLIAM THE FOURTH<br> +These horrible pirates sailed.<br> +<br> +CALAMITY said (with folly),<br> +“Hum! nebber want him again -<br> +Him civilize all of us, golly!<br> +CALAMITY suck him brain!”<br> +The people, however, were pained when<br> +They saw him aboard his ship,<br> +But none of them wept for their FREDDY, except<br> +HUM PICKETY WIMPLE TIP.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: THE MARTINET.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Some time ago, in simple verse<br> +I sang the story true<br> +Of CAPTAIN REECE, the <i>Mantelpiece,<br> +</i>And all her happy crew.<br> +<br> +I showed how any captain may<br> +Attach his men to him,<br> +If he but heeds their smallest needs,<br> +And studies every whim.<br> +<br> +Now mark how, by Draconic rule<br> +And <i>hauteur</i> ill-advised,<br> +The noblest crew upon the Blue<br> +May be demoralized.<br> +<br> +When his ungrateful country placed<br> +Kind REECE upon half-pay,<br> +Without much claim SIR BERKELY came,<br> +And took command one day.<br> +<br> +SIR BERKELY was a martinet -<br> +A stern unyielding soul -<br> +Who ruled his ship by dint of whip<br> +And horrible black-hole.<br> +<br> +A sailor who was overcome<br> +From having freely dined,<br> +And chanced to reel when at the wheel,<br> +He instantly confined!<br> +<br> +And tars who, when an action raged,<br> +Appeared alarmed or scared,<br> +And those below who wished to go,<br> +He very seldom spared.<br> +<br> +E’en he who smote his officer<br> +For punishment was booked,<br> +And mutinies upon the seas<br> +He rarely overlooked.<br> +<br> +In short, the happy <i>Mantelpiece</i>,<br> +Where all had gone so well,<br> +Beneath that fool SIR BERKELY’S rule<br> +Became a floating hell.<br> +<br> +When first SIR BERKELY came aboard<br> +He read a speech to all,<br> +And told them how he’d made a vow<br> +To act on duty’s call.<br> +<br> +Then WILLIAM LEE, he up and said<br> +(The Captain’s coxswain he),<br> +“We’ve heard the speech your honour’s made,<br> +And werry pleased we be.<br> +<br> +“We won’t pretend, my lad, as how<br> +We’re glad to lose our REECE;<br> +Urbane, polite, he suited quite<br> +The saucy <i>Mantelpiece.<br> +<br> +</i>“But if your honour gives your mind<br> +To study all our ways,<br> +With dance and song we’ll jog along<br> +As in those happy days.<br> +<br> +“I like your honour’s looks, and feel<br> +You’re worthy of your sword.<br> +Your hand, my lad - I’m doosid glad<br> +To welcome you aboard!”<br> +<br> +SIR BERKELY looked amazed, as though<br> +He didn’t understand.<br> +“Don’t shake your head,” good WILLIAM said,<br> +“It is an honest hand.<br> +<br> +“It’s grasped a better hand than yourn -<br> +Come, gov’nor, I insist!”<br> +The Captain stared - the coxswain glared -<br> +The hand became a fist!<br> +<br> +“Down, upstart!” said the hardy salt;<br> +But BERKELY dodged his aim,<br> +And made him go in chains below:<br> +The seamen murmured “Shame!”<br> +<br> +He stopped all songs at 12 p.m.,<br> +Stopped hornpipes when at sea,<br> +And swore his cot (or bunk) should not<br> +Be used by aught than he.<br> +<br> +He never joined their daily mess,<br> +Nor asked them to his own,<br> +But chaffed in gay and social way<br> +The officers alone.<br> +<br> +His First Lieutenant, PETER, was<br> +As useless as could be,<br> +A helpless stick, and always sick<br> +When there was any sea.<br> +<br> +This First Lieutenant proved to be<br> +His foster-sister MAY,<br> +Who went to sea for love of he<br> +In masculine array.<br> +<br> +And when he learnt the curious fact,<br> +Did he emotion show,<br> +Or dry her tears or end her fears<br> +By marrying her? No!<br> +<br> +Or did he even try to soothe<br> +This maiden in her teens?<br> +Oh, no! - instead he made her wed<br> +The Sergeant of Marines!<br> +<br> +Of course such Spartan discipline<br> +Would make an angel fret;<br> +They drew a lot, and WILLIAM shot<br> +This fearful martinet.<br> +<br> +The Admiralty saw how ill<br> +They’d treated CAPTAIN REECE;<br> +He was restored once more aboard<br> +The saucy <i>Mantelpiece.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +</i>Ballad: THE SAILOR BOY TO HIS LASS.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I go away this blessed day,<br> +To sail across the sea, MATILDA!<br> +My vessel starts for various parts<br> +At twenty after three, MATILDA.<br> +I hardly know where we may go,<br> +Or if it’s near or far, MATILDA,<br> +For CAPTAIN HYDE does not confide<br> +In any ’fore-mast tar, MATILDA!<br> +<br> +Beneath my ban that mystic man<br> +Shall suffer, <i>coûte qui coûte</i>, MATILDA!<br> +What right has he to keep from me<br> +The Admiralty route, MATILDA?<br> +Because, forsooth! I am a youth<br> +Of common sailors’ lot, MATILDA!<br> +Am I a man on human plan<br> +Designed, or am I not, MATILDA?<br> +<br> +But there, my lass, we’ll let that pass!<br> +With anxious love I burn, MATILDA.<br> +I want to know if we shall go<br> +To church when I return, MATILDA?<br> +Your eyes are red, you bow your head;<br> +It’s pretty clear you thirst, MATILDA,<br> +To name the day - What’s that you say?<br> +- “You’ll see me further first,” MATILDA?<br> +<br> +I can’t mistake the signs you make,<br> +Although you barely speak, MATILDA;<br> +Though pure and young, you thrust your tongue<br> +Right in your pretty cheek, MATILDA!<br> +My dear, I fear I hear you sneer -<br> +I do - I’m sure I do, MATILDA!<br> +With simple grace you make a face,<br> +Ejaculating, “Ugh!” MATILDA.<br> +<br> +Oh, pause to think before you drink<br> +The dregs of Lethe’s cup, MATILDA!<br> +Remember, do, what I’ve gone through,<br> +Before you give me up, MATILDA!<br> +Recall again the mental pain<br> +Of what I’ve had to do, MATILDA!<br> +And be assured that I’ve endured<br> +It, all along of you, MATILDA!<br> +<br> +Do you forget, my blithesome pet,<br> +How once with jealous rage, MATILDA,<br> +I watched you walk and gaily talk<br> +With some one thrice your age, MATILDA?<br> +You squatted free upon his knee,<br> +A sight that made me sad, MATILDA!<br> +You pinched his cheek with friendly tweak,<br> +Which almost drove me mad, MATILDA!<br> +<br> +I knew him not, but hoped to spot<br> +Some man you thought to wed, MATILDA!<br> +I took a gun, my darling one,<br> +And shot him through the head, MATILDA!<br> +I’m made of stuff that’s rough and gruff<br> +Enough, I own; but, ah, MATILDA!<br> +It <i>did</i> annoy your sailor boy<br> +To find it was your pa, MATILDA!<br> +<br> +I’ve passed a life of toil and strife,<br> +And disappointments deep, MATILDA;<br> +I’ve lain awake with dental ache<br> +Until I fell asleep, MATILDA!<br> +At times again I’ve missed a train,<br> +Or p’rhaps run short of tin, MATILDA,<br> +And worn a boot on corns that shoot,<br> +Or, shaving, cut my chin, MATILDA.<br> +<br> +But, oh! no trains - no dental pains -<br> +Believe me when I say, MATILDA,<br> +No corns that shoot - no pinching boot<br> +Upon a summer day, MATILDA -<br> +It’s my belief, could cause such grief<br> +As that I’ve suffered for, MATILDA,<br> +My having shot in vital spot<br> +Your old progenitor, MATILDA.<br> +<br> +Bethink you how I’ve kept the vow<br> +I made one winter day, MATILDA -<br> +That, come what could, I never would<br> +Remain too long away, MATILDA.<br> +And, oh! the crimes with which, at times,<br> +I’ve charged my gentle mind, MATILDA,<br> +To keep the vow I made - and now<br> +You treat me so unkind, MATILDA!<br> +<br> +For when at sea, off Caribbee,<br> +I felt my passion burn, MATILDA,<br> +By passion egged, I went and begged<br> +The captain to return, MATILDA.<br> +And when, my pet, I couldn’t get<br> +That captain to agree, MATILDA,<br> +Right through a sort of open port<br> +I pitched him in the sea, MATILDA!<br> +<br> +Remember, too, how all the crew<br> +With indignation blind, MATILDA,<br> +Distinctly swore they ne’er before<br> +Had thought me so unkind, MATILDA.<br> +And how they’d shun me one by one -<br> +An unforgiving group, MATILDA -<br> +I stopped their howls and sulky scowls<br> +By pizening their soup, MATILDA!<br> +<br> +So pause to think, before you drink<br> +The dregs of Lethe’s cup, MATILDA;<br> +Remember, do, what I’ve gone through,<br> +Before you give me up, MATILDA.<br> +Recall again the mental pain<br> +Of what I’ve had to do, MATILDA,<br> +And be assured that I’ve endured<br> +It, all along of you, MATILDA!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: THE REVEREND SIMON MAGUS.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A rich advowson, highly prized,<br> +For private sale was advertised;<br> +And many a parson made a bid;<br> +The REVEREND SIMON MAGUS did.<br> +<br> +He sought the agent’s: “Agent, I<br> +Have come prepared at once to buy<br> +(If your demand is not too big)<br> +The Cure of Otium-cum-Digge.”<br> +<br> +“Ah!” said the agent, “<i>there’s</i> a berth +-<br> +The snuggest vicarage on earth;<br> +No sort of duty (so I hear),<br> +And fifteen hundred pounds a year!<br> +<br> +“If on the price we should agree,<br> +The living soon will vacant be;<br> +The good incumbent’s ninety five,<br> +And cannot very long survive.<br> +<br> +See - here’s his photograph - you see,<br> +He’s in his dotage.” “Ah, dear me!<br> +Poor soul!” said SIMON. “His decease<br> +Would be a merciful release!”<br> +<br> +The agent laughed - the agent blinked -<br> +The agent blew his nose and winked -<br> +And poked the parson’s ribs in play -<br> +It was that agent’s vulgar way.<br> +<br> +The REVEREND SIMON frowned: “I grieve<br> +This light demeanour to perceive;<br> +It’s scarcely <i>comme il</i> <i>faut</i>, I think:<br> +Now - pray oblige me - do not wink.<br> +<br> +“Don’t dig my waistcoat into holes -<br> +Your mission is to sell the souls<br> +Of human sheep and human kids<br> +To that divine who highest bids.<br> +<br> +“Do well in this, and on your head<br> +Unnumbered honours will be shed.”<br> +The agent said, “Well, truth to tell,<br> +I <i>have</i> been doing very well.”<br> +<br> +“You should,” said SIMON, “at your age;<br> +But now about the parsonage.<br> +How many rooms does it contain?<br> +Show me the photograph again.<br> +<br> +“A poor apostle’s humble house<br> +Must not be too luxurious;<br> +No stately halls with oaken floor -<br> +It should be decent and no more.<br> +<br> +“ No billiard-rooms - no stately trees -<br> +No croquêt-grounds or pineries.”<br> +“Ah!” sighed the agent, “very true:<br> +This property won’t do for you.”<br> +<br> +“All these about the house you’ll find.” -<br> +“Well,” said the parson, “never mind;<br> +I’ll manage to submit to these<br> +Luxurious superfluities.<br> +<br> +“A clergyman who does not shirk<br> +The various calls of Christian work,<br> +Will have no leisure to employ<br> +These ‘common forms’ of worldly joy.<br> +<br> +“To preach three times on Sabbath days -<br> +To wean the lost from wicked ways -<br> +The sick to soothe - the sane to wed -<br> +The poor to feed with meat and bread;<br> +<br> + “These are the various wholesome ways<br> +In which I’ll spend my nights and days:<br> +My zeal will have no time to cool<br> +At croquet, archery, or pool.”<br> +<br> +The agent said, “From what I hear,<br> +This living will not suit, I fear -<br> +There are no poor, no sick at all;<br> +For services there is no call.”<br> +<br> +The reverend gent looked grave, “Dear me!<br> +Then there is <i>no</i> ‘society’? -<br> +I mean, of course, no sinners there<br> +Whose souls will be my special care?”<br> +<br> +The cunning agent shook his head,<br> +“No, none - except” - (the agent said) -<br> +“The DUKE OF A., the EARL OF B.,<br> +The MARQUIS C., and VISCOUNT D.<br> +<br> +“But you will not be quite alone,<br> +For though they’ve chaplains of their own,<br> +Of course this noble well-bred clan<br> +Receive the parish clergyman.”<br> +<br> +“Oh, silence, sir!” said SIMON M.,<br> +“Dukes - Earls! What should I care for them?<br> +These worldly ranks I scorn and flout!”<br> +“Of course,” the agent said, “no doubt!”<br> +<br> +“Yet I might show these men of birth<br> +The hollowness of rank on earth.”<br> +The agent answered, “Very true -<br> +But I should not, if I were you.”<br> +<br> +“Who sells this rich advowson, pray?”<br> +The agent winked - it was his way -<br> +“His name is HART; ’twixt me and you,<br> +He is, I’m grieved to say, a Jew!”<br> +<br> +“A Jew?” said SIMON, “happy find!<br> +I purchase this advowson, mind.<br> +My life shall be devoted to<br> +Converting that unhappy Jew!”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: MY DREAM.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +The other night, from cares exempt,<br> +I slept - and what d’you think I dreamt?<br> +I dreamt that somehow I had come<br> +To dwell in Topsy-Turveydom -<br> +<br> +Where vice is virtue - virtue, vice:<br> +Where nice is nasty - nasty, nice:<br> +Where right is wrong and wrong is right -<br> +Where white is black and black is white.<br> +<br> +Where babies, much to their surprise,<br> +Are born astonishingly wise;<br> +With every Science on their lips,<br> +And Art at all their finger-tips.<br> +<br> +For, as their nurses dandle them<br> +They crow binomial theorem,<br> +With views (it seems absurd to us)<br> +On differential calculus.<br> +<br> +But though a babe, as I have said,<br> +Is born with learning in his head,<br> +He must forget it, if he can,<br> +Before he calls himself a man.<br> +<br> +For that which we call folly here,<br> +Is wisdom in that favoured sphere;<br> +The wisdom we so highly prize<br> +Is blatant folly in their eyes.<br> +<br> +A boy, if he would push his way,<br> +Must learn some nonsense every day;<br> +And cut, to carry out this view,<br> +His wisdom teeth and wisdom too.<br> +<br> +Historians burn their midnight oils,<br> +Intent on giant-killers’ toils;<br> +And sages close their aged eyes<br> +To other sages’ lullabies.<br> +<br> +Our magistrates, in duty bound,<br> +Commit all robbers who are found;<br> +But there the Beaks (so people said)<br> +Commit all robberies instead.<br> +<br> +Our Judges, pure and wise in tone,<br> +Know crime from theory alone,<br> +And glean the motives of a thief<br> +From books and popular belief.<br> +<br> +But there, a Judge who wants to prime<br> +His mind with true ideas of crime,<br> +Derives them from the common sense<br> +Of practical experience.<br> +<br> +Policemen march all folks away<br> +Who practise virtue every day -<br> +Of course, I mean to say, you know,<br> +What we call virtue here below.<br> +<br> +For only scoundrels dare to do<br> +What we consider just and true,<br> +And only good men do, in fact,<br> +What we should think a dirty act.<br> +<br> +But strangest of these social twirls,<br> +The girls are boys - the boys are girls!<br> +The men are women, too - but then,<br> +<i>Per contra</i>, women all are men.<br> +<br> +To one who to tradition clings<br> +This seems an awkward state of things,<br> +But if to think it out you try,<br> +It doesn’t really signify.<br> +<br> +With them, as surely as can be,<br> +A sailor should be sick at sea,<br> +And not a passenger may sail<br> +Who cannot smoke right through a gale.<br> +<br> +A soldier (save by rarest luck)<br> +Is always shot for showing pluck<br> +(That is, if others can be found<br> +With pluck enough to fire a round).<br> +<br> +“How strange!” I said to one I saw;<br> +“You quite upset our every law.<br> +However can you get along<br> +So systematically wrong?”<br> +<br> +“Dear me!” my mad informant said,<br> +“Have you no eyes within your head?<br> +You sneer when you your hat should doff:<br> +Why, we begin where you leave off!<br> +<br> +“Your wisest men are very far<br> +Less learned than our babies are!”<br> +I mused awhile - and then, oh me!<br> +I framed this brilliant repartee:<br> +<br> +“Although your babes are wiser far<br> +Than our most valued sages are,<br> +Your sages, with their toys and cots,<br> +Are duller than our idiots!”<br> +<br> +But this remark, I grieve to state,<br> +Came just a little bit too late<br> +For as I framed it in my head,<br> +I woke and found myself in bed.<br> +<br> +Still I could wish that, ’stead of here,<br> +My lot were in that favoured sphere! -<br> +Where greatest fools bear off the bell<br> +I ought to do extremely well.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: THE BISHOP OF RUM-TI-FOO AGAIN.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I often wonder whether you<br> +Think sometimes of that Bishop, who<br> +From black but balmy Rum-ti-Foo<br> +Last summer twelvemonth came.<br> +Unto your mind I p’r’aps may bring<br> +Remembrance of the man I sing<br> +To-day, by simply mentioning<br> +That PETER was his name.<br> +<br> +Remember how that holy man<br> +Came with the great Colonial clan<br> +To Synod, called Pan-Anglican;<br> +And kindly recollect<br> +How, having crossed the ocean wide,<br> +To please his flock all means he tried<br> +Consistent with a proper pride<br> +And manly self-respect.<br> +<br> +He only, of the reverend pack<br> +Who minister to Christians black,<br> +Brought any useful knowledge back<br> +To his Colonial fold.<br> +In consequence a place I claim<br> +For “PETER” on the scroll of Fame<br> +(For PETER was that Bishop’s name,<br> +As I’ve already told).<br> +<br> +He carried Art, he often said,<br> +To places where that timid maid<br> +(Save by Colonial Bishops’ aid)<br> +Could never hope to roam.<br> +The Payne-cum-Lauri feat he taught<br> +As he had learnt it; for he thought<br> +The choicest fruits of Progress ought<br> +To bless the Negro’s home.<br> +<br> +And he had other work to do,<br> +For, while he tossed upon the Blue,<br> +The islanders of Rum-ti-Foo<br> +Forgot their kindly friend.<br> +Their decent clothes they learnt to tear -<br> +They learnt to say, “I do not care,”<br> +Though they, of course, were well aware<br> +How folks, who say so, end.<br> +<br> +Some sailors, whom he did not know,<br> +Had landed there not long ago,<br> +And taught them “Bother!” also, “Blow!”<br> +(Of wickedness the germs).<br> +No need to use a casuist’s pen<br> +To prove that they were merchantmen;<br> +No sailor of the Royal N.<br> +Would use such awful terms.<br> +<br> +And so, when BISHOP PETER came<br> +(That was the kindly Bishop’s name),<br> +He heard these dreadful oaths with shame,<br> +And chid their want of dress.<br> +(Except a shell - a bangle rare -<br> +A feather here - a feather there<br> +The South Pacific Negroes wear<br> +Their native nothingness.)<br> +<br> +He taught them that a Bishop loathes<br> +To listen to disgraceful oaths,<br> +He gave them all his left-off clothes -<br> +They bent them to his will.<br> +The Bishop’s gift spreads quickly round;<br> +In PETER’S left-off clothes they bound<br> +(His three-and-twenty suits they found<br> +In fair condition still).<br> +<br> +The Bishop’s eyes with water fill,<br> +Quite overjoyed to find them still<br> +Obedient to his sovereign will,<br> +And said, “Good Rum-ti-Foo!<br> +Half-way I’ll meet you, I declare:<br> +I’ll dress myself in cowries rare,<br> +And fasten feathers in my hair,<br> +And dance the ‘Cutch-chi-boo!’” <a name="citation13"></a><a href="#footnote13">{13}</a><br> +<br> +And to conciliate his See<br> +He married PICCADILLILLEE,<br> +The youngest of his twenty-three,<br> +Tall - neither fat nor thin.<br> +(And though the dress he made her don<br> +Looks awkwardly a girl upon,<br> +It was a great improvement on<br> +The one he found her in.)<br> +<br> +The Bishop in his gay canoe<br> +(His wife, of course, went with him too)<br> +To some adjacent island flew,<br> +To spend his honeymoon.<br> +Some day in sunny Rum-ti-Foo<br> +A little PETER’ll be on view;<br> +And that (if people tell me true)<br> +Is like to happen soon.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: THE HAUGHTY ACTOR.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +AN actor - GIBBS, of Drury Lane -<br> +Of very decent station,<br> +Once happened in a part to gain<br> +Excessive approbation:<br> +It sometimes turns a fellow’s brain<br> +And makes him singularly vain<br> +When he believes that he receives<br> +Tremendous approbation.<br> +<br> +His great success half drove him mad,<br> +But no one seemed to mind him;<br> +Well, in another piece he had<br> +Another part assigned him.<br> +This part was smaller, by a bit,<br> +Than that in which he made a hit.<br> +So, much ill-used, he straight refused<br> +To play the part assigned him.<br> +<br> +* * * * * * * *<br> +<br> +<i>That night that actor slept, and I’ll attempt<br> +To tell you of the vivid dream he dreamt.<br> +<br> +<br> +</i>THE DREAM.<br> +<br> +<br> +In fighting with a robber band<br> +(A thing he loved sincerely)<br> +A sword struck GIBBS upon the hand,<br> +And wounded it severely.<br> +At first he didn’t heed it much,<br> +He thought it was a simple touch,<br> +But soon he found the weapon’s bound<br> +Had wounded him severely.<br> +<br> +To Surgeon COBB he made a trip,<br> +Who’d just effected featly<br> +An amputation at the hip<br> +Particularly neatly.<br> +A rising man was Surgeon COBB<br> +But this extremely ticklish job<br> +He had achieved (as he believed)<br> +Particularly neatly.<br> +<br> +The actor rang the surgeon’s bell.<br> +“Observe my wounded finger,<br> +Be good enough to strap it well,<br> +And prithee do not linger.<br> +That I, dear sir, may fill again<br> +The Theatre Royal Drury Lane:<br> +This very night I have to fight -<br> +So prithee do not linger.”<br> +<br> +“I don’t strap fingers up for doles,”<br> +Replied the haughty surgeon;<br> +“To use your cant, I don’t play <i>rôles<br> +</i>Utility that verge on.<br> +First amputation - nothing less -<br> +That is my line of business:<br> +We surgeon nobs despise all jobs<br> +Utility that verge on<br> +<br> +“When in your hip there lurks disease”<br> +(So dreamt this lively dreamer),<br> +“Or devastating <i>caries<br> +</i>In <i>humerus</i> or <i>femur,<br> +</i>If you can pay a handsome fee,<br> +Oh, then you may remember me -<br> +With joy elate I’ll amputate<br> +Your <i>humerus</i> or <i>femur</i>.”<br> +<br> +The disconcerted actor ceased<br> +The haughty leech to pester,<br> +But when the wound in size increased,<br> +And then began to fester,<br> +He sought a learned Counsel’s lair,<br> +And told that Counsel, then and there,<br> +How COBB’S neglect of his defect<br> +Had made his finger fester.<br> +<br> +“Oh, bring my action, if you please,<br> +The case I pray you urge on,<br> +And win me thumping damages<br> +From COBB, that haughty surgeon.<br> +He culpably neglected me<br> +Although I proffered him his fee,<br> +So pray come down, in wig and gown,<br> +On COBB, that haughty surgeon!”<br> +<br> +That Counsel learned in the laws,<br> +With passion almost trembled.<br> +He just had gained a mighty cause<br> +Before the Peers assembled!<br> +Said he, “How dare you have the face<br> +To come with Common Jury case<br> +To one who wings rhetoric flings<br> +Before the Peers assembled?”<br> +<br> +Dispirited became our friend -<br> +Depressed his moral pecker -<br> +“But stay! a thought! - I’ll gain my end,<br> +And save my poor exchequer.<br> +I won’t be placed upon the shelf,<br> +I’ll take it into Court myself,<br> +And legal lore display before<br> +The Court of the Exchequer.”<br> +<br> +He found a Baron - one of those<br> +Who with our laws supply us -<br> +In wig and silken gown and hose,<br> +As if at <i>Nisi Prius.<br> +</i>But he’d just given, off the reel,<br> +A famous judgment on Appeal:<br> +It scarce became his heightened fame<br> +To sit at <i>Nisi Prius.<br> +<br> +</i>Our friend began, with easy wit,<br> +That half concealed his terror:<br> +“Pooh!” said the Judge, “I only sit<br> +In <i>Banco</i> or in Error.<br> +Can you suppose, my man, that I’d<br> +O’er <i>Nisi Prius</i> Courts preside,<br> +Or condescend my time to spend<br> +On anything but Error?”<br> +<br> +“Too bad,” said GIBBS, “my case to shirk!<br> +You must be bad innately,<br> +To save your skill for mighty work<br> +Because it’s valued greatly!”<br> +But here he woke, with sudden start.<br> +<br> +* * * * * * * *<br> +<br> +He wrote to say he’d play the part.<br> +I’ve but to tell he played it well -<br> +The author’s words - his native wit<br> +Combined, achieved a perfect “hit” -<br> +The papers praised him greatly.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: THE TWO MAJORS.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +An excellent soldier who’s worthy the name<br> +Loves officers dashing and strict:<br> +When good, he’s content with escaping all blame,<br> +When naughty, he likes to be licked.<br> +<br> +He likes for a fault to be bullied and stormed,<br> +Or imprisoned for several days,<br> +And hates, for a duty correctly performed,<br> +To be slavered with sickening praise.<br> +<br> +No officer sickened with praises his <i>corps<br> +</i>So little as MAJOR LA GUERRE -<br> +No officer swore at his warriors more<br> +Than MAJOR MAKREDI PREPERE.<br> +<br> +Their soldiers adored them, and every grade<br> +Delighted to hear their abuse;<br> +Though whenever these officers came on parade<br> +They shivered and shook in their shoes.<br> +<br> +For, oh! if LA GUERRE could all praises withhold,<br> +Why, so could MAKREDI PREPERE,<br> +And, oh! if MAKREDI could bluster and scold,<br> +Why, so could the mighty LA GUERRE.<br> +<br> +“No doubt we deserve it - no mercy we crave -<br> +Go on - you’re conferring a boon;<br> +We would rather be slanged by a warrior brave,<br> +Than praised by a wretched poltroon!”<br> +<br> +MAKREDI would say that in battle’s fierce rage<br> +True happiness only was met:<br> +Poor MAJOR MAKREDI, though fifty his age,<br> +Had never known happiness yet!<br> +<br> +LA GUERRE would declare, “With the blood of a foe<br> +No tipple is worthy to clink.”<br> +Poor fellow! he hadn’t, though sixty or so,<br> +Yet tasted his favourite drink!<br> +<br> +They agreed at their mess - they agreed in the glass -<br> +They agreed in the choice of their “set,”<br> +And they also agreed in adoring, alas!<br> +The Vivandière, pretty FILLETTE.<br> +<br> +Agreement, you see, may be carried too far,<br> +And after agreeing all round<br> +For years - in this soldierly “maid of the bar,”<br> +A bone of contention they found!<br> +<br> +It may seem improper to call such a pet -<br> +By a metaphor, even - a bone;<br> +But though they agreed in adoring her, yet<br> +Each wanted to make her his own.<br> +<br> +“On the day that you marry her,” muttered PREPERE<br> +(With a pistol he quietly played),<br> +“I’ll scatter the brains in your noddle, I swear,<br> +All over the stony parade!”<br> +<br> +“I cannot do <i>that</i> to you,” answered LA GUERRE,<br> +“Whatever events may befall;<br> +But this <i>I can</i> do - <i>if you</i> wed her, <i>mon cher!<br> +</i>I’ll eat you, moustachios and all!”<br> +<br> +The rivals, although they would never engage,<br> +Yet quarrelled whenever they met;<br> +They met in a fury and left in a rage,<br> +But neither took pretty FILLETTE.<br> +<br> +“I am not afraid,” thought MAKREDI PREPERE:<br> +“For country I’m ready to fall;<br> +But nobody wants, for a mere Vivandière,<br> +To be eaten, moustachios and all!<br> +<br> +“Besides, though LA GUERRE has his faults, I’ll allow<br> +He’s one of the bravest of men:<br> +My goodness! if I disagree with him now,<br> +I might disagree with him then.”<br> +<br> +“No coward am I,” said LA GUERRE, “as you guess -<br> +I sneer at an enemy’s blade;<br> +But I don’t want PREPERE to get into a mess<br> +For splashing the stony parade!”<br> +<br> +One day on parade to PREPERE and LA GUERRE<br> +Came CORPORAL JACOT DEBETTE,<br> +And trembling all over, he prayed of them there<br> +To give him the pretty FILLETTE.<br> +<br> +“You see, I am willing to marry my bride<br> +Until you’ve arranged this affair;<br> +I will blow out my brains when your honours decide<br> +Which marries the sweet Vivandière!”<br> +<br> +“Well, take her,’ said both of them in a duet<br> +(A favourite form of reply),<br> +“But when I am ready to marry FILLETTE.<br> +Remember you’ve promised to die!”<br> +<br> +He married her then: from the flowery plains<br> +Of existence the roses they cull:<br> +He lived and he died with his wife; and his brains<br> +Are reposing in peace in his skull.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: EMILY, JOHN, JAMES, AND I. A DERBY LEGEND.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +EMILY JANE was a nursery maid,<br> +JAMES was a bold Life Guard,<br> +JOHN was a constable, poorly paid<br> +(And I am a doggerel bard).<br> +<br> +A very good girl was EMILY JANE,<br> +JIMMY was good and true,<br> +JOHN was a very good man in the main<br> +(And I am a good man too).<br> +<br> +Rivals for EMMIE were JOHNNY and JAMES,<br> +Though EMILY liked them both;<br> +She couldn’t tell which had the strongest claims<br> +(And <i>I</i> couldn’t take my oath).<br> +<br> +But sooner or later you’re certain to find<br> +Your sentiments can’t lie hid -<br> +JANE thought it was time that she made up her mind<br> +(And I think it was time she did).<br> +<br> +Said JANE, with a smirk, and a blush on her face,<br> +“I’ll promise to wed the boy<br> +Who takes me to-morrow to Epsom Race!”<br> +(Which I would have done, with joy).<br> +<br> +From JOHNNY escaped an expression of pain,<br> +But Jimmy said, “Done with you!<br> +I’ll take you with pleasure, my EMILY JANE!”<br> +(And I would have said so too).<br> +<br> +JOHN lay on the ground, and he roared like mad<br> +(For JOHNNY was sore perplexed),<br> +And he kicked very hard at a very small lad<br> +(Which <i>I</i> often do, when vexed).<br> +<br> +For JOHN was on duty next day with the Force,<br> +To punish all Epsom crimes;<br> +Young people <i>will</i> cross when they’re clearing the course<br> +(I do it myself, sometimes).<br> +<br> +* * * * * * * *<br> +<br> +The Derby Day sun glittered gaily on cads,<br> +On maidens with gamboge hair,<br> +On sharpers and pickpockets, swindlers and pads,<br> +(For I, with my harp, was there).<br> +<br> +And JIMMY went down with his JANE that day,<br> +And JOHN by the collar or nape<br> +Seized everybody who came in his way<br> +(And <i>I</i> had a narrow escape).<br> +<br> +He noticed his EMILY JANE with JIM,<br> +And envied the well-made elf;<br> +And people remarked that he muttered “Oh, dim!”<br> +(I often say “dim!” myself).<br> +<br> +JOHN dogged them all day, without asking their leaves;<br> +For his sergeant he told, aside,<br> +That JIMMY and JANE were notorious thieves<br> +(And I think he was justified).<br> +<br> +But JAMES wouldn’t dream of abstracting a fork,<br> +And JENNY would blush with shame<br> +At stealing so much as a bottle or cork<br> +(A bottle I think fair game).<br> +<br> +But, ah! there’s another more serious crime!<br> +They wickedly strayed upon<br> +The course, at a critical moment of time<br> +(I pointed them out to JOHN).<br> +<br> +The constable fell on the pair in a crack -<br> +And then, with a demon smile,<br> +Let JENNY cross over, but sent JIMMY back<br> +(I played on my harp the while).<br> +<br> +Stern JOHNNY their agony loud derides<br> +With a very triumphant sneer -<br> +They weep and they wail from the opposite sides<br> +(And <i>I</i> shed a silent tear).<br> +<br> +And JENNY is crying away like mad,<br> +And JIMMY is swearing hard;<br> +And JOHNNY is looking uncommonly glad<br> +(And I am a doggerel bard).<br> +<br> +But JIMMY he ventured on crossing again<br> +The scenes of our Isthmian Games -<br> +JOHN caught him, and collared him, giving him pain<br> +(I felt very much for JAMES).<br> +<br> +JOHN led him away with a victor’s hand,<br> +And JIMMY was shortly seen<br> +In the station-house under the grand Grand Stand<br> +(As many a time <i>I’ve</i> been).<br> +<br> +And JIMMY, bad boy, was imprisoned for life,<br> +Though EMILY pleaded hard;<br> +And JOHNNY had EMILY JANE to wife<br> +(And I am a doggerel bard).<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: THE PERILS OF INVISIBILITY.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Old PETER led a wretched life -<br> +Old PETER had a furious wife;<br> +Old PETER too was truly stout,<br> +He measured several yards about.<br> +<br> +The little fairy PICKLEKIN<br> +One summer afternoon looked in,<br> +And said, “Old PETER, how de do?<br> +Can I do anything for you?<br> +<br> +“I have three gifts - the first will give<br> +Unbounded riches while you live;<br> +The second health where’er you be;<br> +The third, invisibility.”<br> +<br> +“O little fairy PICKLEKIN,”<br> +Old PETER answered with a grin,<br> +“To hesitate would be absurd, -<br> +Undoubtedly I choose the third.”<br> +<br> +“’Tis yours,” the fairy said; “be quite<br> +Invisible to mortal sight<br> +Whene’er you please. Remember me<br> +Most kindly, pray, to MRS. P.”<br> +<br> +Old MRS. PETER overheard<br> +Wee PICKLEKIN’S concluding word,<br> +And, jealous of her girlhood’s choice,<br> +Said, “That was some young woman’s voice:<br> +<br> +Old PETER let her scold and swear -<br> +Old PETER, bless him, didn’t care.<br> +“My dear, your rage is wasted quite -<br> +Observe, I disappear from sight!”<br> +<br> +A well-bred fairy (so I’ve heard)<br> +Is always faithful to her word:<br> +Old PETER vanished like a shot,<br> +Put then - <i>his suit of clothes did not</i>!<br> +<br> +For when conferred the fairy slim<br> +Invisibility on <i>him,<br> +</i>She popped away on fairy wings,<br> +Without referring to his “things.”<br> +<br> +So there remained a coat of blue,<br> +A vest and double eyeglass too,<br> +His tail, his shoes, his socks as well,<br> +His pair of - no, I must not tell.<br> +<br> +Old MRS. PETER soon began<br> +To see the failure of his plan,<br> +And then resolved (I quote the Bard)<br> +To “hoist him with his own petard.”<br> +<br> +Old PETER woke next day and dressed,<br> +Put on his coat, and shoes, and vest,<br> +His shirt and stock; <i>but could not find<br> +His only pair of</i> - never mind!<br> +<br> +Old PETER was a decent man,<br> +And though he twigged his lady’s plan,<br> +Yet, hearing her approaching, he<br> +Resumed invisibility.<br> +<br> +“Dear MRS. P., my only joy,”<br> +Exclaimed the horrified old boy,<br> +“Now, give them up, I beg of you -<br> +You know what I’m referring to!”<br> +<br> +But no; the cross old lady swore<br> +She’d keep his - what I said before -<br> +To make him publicly absurd;<br> +And MRS. PETER kept her word.<br> +<br> +The poor old fellow had no rest;<br> +His coat, his stick, his shoes, his vest,<br> +Were all that now met mortal eye -<br> +The rest, invisibility!<br> +<br> +“Now, madam, give them up, I beg -<br> +I’ve had rheumatics in my leg;<br> +Besides, until you do, it’s plain<br> +I cannot come to sight again!<br> +<br> +“For though some mirth it might afford<br> +To see my clothes without their lord,<br> +Yet there would rise indignant oaths<br> +If he were seen without his clothes!”<br> +<br> +But no; resolved to have her quiz,<br> +The lady held her own - and his -<br> +And PETER left his humble cot<br> +To find a pair of - you know what.<br> +<br> +But - here’s the worst of the affair -<br> +Whene’er he came across a pair<br> +Already placed for him to don,<br> +He was too stout to get them on!<br> +<br> +So he resolved at once to train,<br> +And walked and walked with all his main;<br> +For years he paced this mortal earth,<br> +To bring himself to decent girth.<br> +<br> +At night, when all around is still,<br> +You’ll find him pounding up a hill;<br> +And shrieking peasants whom he meets,<br> +Fall down in terror on the peats!<br> +<br> +Old PETER walks through wind and rain,<br> +Resolved to train, and train, and train,<br> +Until he weighs twelve stone’ or so -<br> +And when he does, I’ll let you know.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: THE MYSTIC SELVAGEE.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Perhaps already you may know<br> +SIR BLENNERHASSET PORTICO?<br> +A Captain in the Navy, he -<br> +A Baronet and K.C.B.<br> +You do? I thought so!<br> +It was that Captain’s favourite whim<br> +(A notion not confined to him)<br> +That RODNEY was the greatest tar<br> +Who ever wielded capstan-bar.<br> +He had been taught so.<br> +<br> +“BENBOW! CORNWALLIS! HOOD! - Belay!<br> +Compared with RODNEY” - he would say -<br> +“No other tar is worth a rap!<br> +The great LORD RODNEY was the chap<br> +The French to polish!<br> + “Though, mind you, I respect LORD HOOD;<br> +CORNWALLIS, too, was rather good;<br> +BENBOW could enemies repel,<br> +LORD NELSON, too, was pretty well -<br> +That is, tol-lol-ish!”<br> +<br> +SIR BLENNERHASSET spent his days<br> +In learning RODNEY’S little ways,<br> +And closely imitated, too,<br> +His mode of talking to his crew -<br> +His port and paces.<br> +An ancient tar he tried to catch<br> +Who’d served in RODNEY’S famous batch;<br> +But since his time long years have fled,<br> +And RODNEY’S tars are mostly dead:<br> +<i>Eheu fugaces</i>!<br> +<br> +But after searching near and far,<br> +At last he found an ancient tar<br> +Who served with RODNEY and his crew<br> +Against the French in ’Eighty-two,<br> +(That gained the peerage).<br> +He gave him fifty pounds a year,<br> +His rum, his baccy, and his beer;<br> +And had a comfortable den<br> +Rigged up in what, by merchantmen,<br> +Is called the steerage.<br> +<br> +“Now, JASPER” - ’t was that sailor’s name -<br> +“Don’t fear that you’ll incur my blame<br> +By saying, when it seems to you,<br> +That there is anything I do<br> +That RODNEY wouldn’t.”<br> +The ancient sailor turned his quid,<br> +Prepared to do as he was bid:<br> +“Ay, ay, yer honour; to begin,<br> +You’ve done away with ‘swifting in’ -<br> +Well, sir, you shouldn’t!<br> +<br> +“Upon your spars I see you’ve clapped<br> +Peak halliard blocks, all iron-capped.<br> +I would not christen that a crime,<br> +But ’twas not done in RODNEY’S time.<br> +It looks half-witted!<br> +Upon your maintop-stay, I see,<br> +You always clap a selvagee!<br> +Your stays, I see, are equalized -<br> +No vessel, such as RODNEY prized,<br> +Would thus be fitted!<br> +<br> +“And RODNEY, honoured sir, would grin<br> +To see you turning deadeyes in,<br> +Not <i>up</i>, as in the ancient way,<br> +But downwards, like a cutter’s stay -<br> +You didn’t oughter;<br> +Besides, in seizing shrouds on board,<br> +Breast backstays you have quite ignored;<br> +Great RODNEY kept unto the last<br> +Breast backstays on topgallant mast -<br> +They make it tauter.”<br> +<br> +SIR BLENNERHASSET “swifted in,”<br> +Turned deadeyes up, and lent a fin<br> +To strip (as told by JASPER KNOX)<br> +The iron capping from his blocks,<br> +Where there was any.<br> +SIR BLENNERHASSET does away,<br> +With selvagees from maintop-stay;<br> +And though it makes his sailors stare,<br> +He rigs breast backstays everywhere -<br> +In fact, too many.<br> +<br> +One morning, when the saucy craft<br> +Lay calmed, old JASPER toddled aft.<br> +“My mind misgives me, sir, that we<br> +Were wrong about that selvagee -<br> +I should restore it.”<br> +“Good,” said the Captain, and that day<br> +Restored it to the maintop-stay.<br> +Well-practised sailors often make<br> +A much more serious mistake,<br> +And then ignore it.<br> +<br> +Next day old JASPER came once more:<br> +“I think, sir, I was right before.”<br> +Well, up the mast the sailors skipped,<br> +The selvagee was soon unshipped,<br> +And all were merry.<br> +Again a day, and JASPER came:<br> +“I p’r’aps deserve your honour’s blame,<br> +I can’t make up my mind,” said he,<br> +“About that cursed selvagee -<br> +It’s foolish - very.<br> +<br> +“On Monday night I could have sworn<br> +That maintop-stay it should adorn,<br> +On Tuesday morning I could swear<br> +That selvagee should not be there.<br> +The knot’s a rasper!”<br> +“Oh, you be hanged,” said CAPTAIN P.,<br> +“Here, go ashore at Caribbee.<br> +Get out - good bye - shove off - all right!”<br> +Old JASPER soon was out of sight -<br> +Farewell, old JASPER!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: PHRENOLOGY.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“Come, collar this bad man -<br> +Around the throat he knotted me<br> +Till I to choke began -<br> +In point of fact, garotted me!”<br> +<br> +So spake SIR HERBERT WRITE<br> +To JAMES, Policeman Thirty-two -<br> +All ruffled with his fight<br> +SIR HERBERT was, and dirty too.<br> +<br> +Policeman nothing said<br> +(Though he had much to say on it),<br> +But from the bad man’s head<br> +He took the cap that lay on it.<br> +<br> +“No, great SIR HERBERT WHITE -<br> +Impossible to take him up.<br> +This man is honest quite -<br> +Wherever did you rake him up?<br> +<br> +“For Burglars, Thieves, and Co.,<br> +Indeed, I’m no apologist,<br> +But I, some years ago,<br> +Assisted a Phrenologist.<br> +<br> +“Observe his various bumps,<br> +His head as I uncover it:<br> +His morals lie in lumps<br> +All round about and over it.”<br> +<br> +“Now take him,” said SIR WHITE,<br> +“Or you will soon be rueing it;<br> +Bless me! I must be right, -<br> +I caught the fellow doing it!”<br> +<br> +Policeman calmly smiled,<br> +“Indeed you are mistaken, sir,<br> +You’re agitated - riled -<br> +And very badly shaken, sir.<br> +<br> +“Sit down, and I’ll explain<br> +My system of Phrenology,<br> +A second, please, remain” -<br> +(A second is horology).<br> +<br> +Policeman left his beat -<br> +(The Bart., no longer furious,<br> +Sat down upon a seat,<br> +Observing, “This is curious!”)<br> +<br> +“Oh, surely, here are signs<br> +Should soften your rigidity:<br> +This gentleman combines<br> +Politeness with timidity.<br> +<br> +“Of Shyness here’s a lump -<br> +A hole for Animosity -<br> +And like my fist his bump<br> +Of Impecuniosity.<br> +<br> +“Just here the bump appears<br> +Of Innocent Hilarity,<br> +And just behind his ears<br> +Are Faith, and Hope, and Charity.<br> +<br> +He of true Christian ways<br> +As bright example sent us is -<br> +This maxim he obeys,<br> +‘<i>Sorte tuâ contentus sis</i>.’<br> +<br> +“There, let him go his ways,<br> +He needs no stern admonishing.”<br> +The Bart., in blank amaze,<br> +Exclaimed, “This is astonishing!<br> +<br> +“I <i>must</i> have made a mull,<br> +This matter I’ve been blind in it:<br> +Examine, please, <i>my</i> skull,<br> +And tell me what you find in it.”<br> +<br> +That Crusher looked, and said,<br> +With unimpaired urbanity,<br> +“SIR HERBERT, you’ve a head<br> +That teems with inhumanity.<br> +<br> +“Here’s Murder, Envy, Strife<br> +(Propensity to kill any),<br> +And Lies as large as life,<br> +And heaps of Social Villany.<br> +<br> +“Here’s Love of Bran-New Clothes,<br> +Embezzling - Arson - Deism -<br> +A taste for Slang and Oaths,<br> +And Fraudulent Trusteeism.<br> +<br> +“Here’s Love of Groundless Charge -<br> +Here’s Malice, too, and Trickery,<br> +Unusually large<br> +Your bump of Pocket-Pickery - ”<br> +<br> +“Stop!” said the Bart., “my cup<br> +Is full - I’m worse than him in all;<br> +Policeman, take me up -<br> +No doubt I am some criminal!”<br> +<br> +That Pleeceman’s scorn grew large<br> +(Phrenology had nettled it),<br> +He took that Bart. in charge -<br> +I don’t know how they settled it.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: THE FAIRY CURATE.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Once a fairy<br> +Light and airy<br> +Married with a mortal;<br> +Men, however,<br> +Never, never<br> +Pass the fairy portal.<br> +Slyly stealing,<br> +She to Ealing<br> +Made a daily journey;<br> +There she found him,<br> +Clients round him<br> +(He was an attorney).<br> +<br> +Long they tarried,<br> +Then they married.<br> +When the ceremony<br> +Once was ended,<br> +Off they wended<br> +On their moon of honey.<br> +Twelvemonth, maybe,<br> +Saw a baby<br> +(Friends performed an orgie).<br> +Much they prized him,<br> +And baptized him<br> +By the name of GEORGIE,<br> +<br> +GEORGIE grew up;<br> +Then he flew up<br> +To his fairy mother.<br> +Happy meeting -<br> +Pleasant greeting -<br> +Kissing one another.<br> +“Choose a calling<br> +Most enthralling,<br> +I sincerely urge ye.”<br> +“Mother,” said he<br> +(Rev’rence made he),<br> +“I would join the clergy.<br> +<br> +“Give permission<br> +In addition -<br> +Pa will let me do it:<br> +There’s a living<br> +In his giving -<br> +He’ll appoint me to it.<br> +Dreams of coff’ring,<br> +Easter off’ring,<br> +Tithe and rent and pew-rate,<br> +So inflame me<br> +(Do not blame me),<br> +That I’ll be a curate.”<br> +<br> +She, with pleasure,<br> +Said, “My treasure,<br> +’T is my wish precisely.<br> +Do your duty,<br> +There’s a beauty;<br> +You have chosen wisely.<br> +Tell your father<br> +I would rather<br> +As a churchman rank you.<br> +You, in clover,<br> +I’ll watch over.”<br> +GEORGIE said, “Oh, thank you!”<br> +<br> +GEORGIE scudded,<br> +Went and studied,<br> +Made all preparations,<br> +And with credit<br> +(Though he said it)<br> +Passed examinations.<br> +(Do not quarrel<br> +With him, moral,<br> +Scrupulous digestions -<br> +’Twas his mother,<br> +And no other,<br> +Answered all the questions.)<br> +<br> +Time proceeded;<br> +Little needed<br> +GEORGIE admonition:<br> +He, elated,<br> +Vindicated<br> +Clergyman’s position.<br> +People round him<br> +Always found him<br> +Plain and unpretending;<br> +Kindly teaching,<br> +Plainly preaching,<br> +All his money lending.<br> +<br> +So the fairy,<br> +Wise and wary,<br> +Felt no sorrow rising -<br> +No occasion<br> +For persuasion,<br> +Warning, or advising.<br> +He, resuming<br> +Fairy pluming<br> +(That’s not English, is it?)<br> +Oft would fly up,<br> +To the sky up,<br> +Pay mamma a visit.<br> +<br> +* * * * * * * *<br> +<br> +Time progressing,<br> +GEORGIE’S blessing<br> +Grew more Ritualistic -<br> +Popish scandals,<br> +Tonsures - sandals -<br> +Genuflections mystic;<br> +Gushing meetings -<br> +Bosom-beatings -<br> +Heavenly ecstatics -<br> +Broidered spencers -<br> +Copes and censers -<br> +Rochets and dalmatics.<br> +<br> +This quandary<br> +Vexed the fairy -<br> +Flew she down to Ealing.<br> +“GEORGIE, stop it!<br> +Pray you, drop it;<br> +Hark to my appealing:<br> +To this foolish<br> +Papal rule-ish<br> +Twaddle put an ending;<br> +This a swerve is<br> +From our Service<br> +Plain and unpretending.”<br> +<br> +He, replying,<br> +Answered, sighing,<br> +Hawing, hemming, humming,<br> +“It’s a pity -<br> +They’re so pritty;<br> +Yet in mode becoming,<br> +Mother tender,<br> +I’ll surrender -<br> +I’ll be unaffected - ”<br> +But his Bishop<br> +Into <i>his</i> shop<br> +Entered unexpected!<br> +<br> +“Who is this, sir, -<br> +Ballet miss, sir?”<br> +Said the Bishop coldly.<br> +“’T is my mother,<br> +And no other,”<br> +GEORGIE answered boldly.<br> +“Go along, sir!<br> +You are wrong, sir;<br> +You have years in plenty,<br> +While this hussy<br> +(Gracious mussy!)<br> +Isn’t two and twenty!”<br> +<br> +(Fairies clever<br> +Never, never<br> +Grow in visage older;<br> +And the fairy,<br> +All unwary,<br> +Leant upon his shoulder!)<br> +Bishop grieved him,<br> +Disbelieved him;<br> +GEORGE the point grew warm on;<br> +Changed religion,<br> +Like a pigeon, <a name="citation14"></a><a href="#footnote14">{14}</a><br> +And became a Mormon!<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: THE WAY OF WOOING.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A maiden sat at her window wide,<br> +Pretty enough for a Prince’s bride,<br> +Yet nobody came to claim her.<br> +She sat like a beautiful picture there,<br> +With pretty bluebells and roses fair,<br> +And jasmine-leaves to frame her.<br> +And why she sat there nobody knows;<br> +But this she sang as she plucked a rose,<br> +The leaves around her strewing:<br> +“I’ve time to lose and power to choose;<br> +’T is not so much the gallant who woos,<br> +But the gallant’s <i>way</i> of wooing!”<br> +<br> +A lover came riding by awhile,<br> +A wealthy lover was he, whose smile<br> +Some maids would value greatly -<br> +A formal lover, who bowed and bent,<br> +With many a high-flown compliment,<br> +And cold demeanour stately,<br> +“You’ve still,” said she to her suitor stern,<br> +“The ’prentice-work of your craft to learn,<br> +If thus you come a-cooing.<br> +I’ve time to lose and power to choose;<br> +’T is not so much the gallant who woos,<br> +As the gallant’s <i>way</i> of wooing!”<br> +<br> +A second lover came ambling by -<br> +A timid lad with a frightened eye<br> +And a colour mantling highly.<br> +He muttered the errand on which he’d come,<br> +Then only chuckled and bit his thumb,<br> +And simpered, simpered shyly.<br> +“No,” said the maiden, “go your way;<br> +You dare but think what a man would say,<br> +Yet dare to come a-suing!<br> +I’ve time to lose and power to choose;<br> +’T is not so much the gallant who woos,<br> +As the gallant’s <i>way</i> of wooing!”<br> +<br> +A third rode up at a startling pace -<br> +A suitor poor, with a homely face -<br> +No doubts appeared to bind him.<br> +He kissed her lips and he pressed her waist,<br> +And off he rode with the maiden, placed<br> +On a pillion safe behind him.<br> +And she heard the suitor bold confide<br> +This golden hint to the priest who tied<br> +The knot there’s no undoing;<br> +With pretty young maidens who can choose,<br> +’T is not so much the gallant who woos,<br> +As the gallant’s <i>way</i> of wooing!”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: HONGREE AND MAHRY. A RECOLLECTION OF A SURREY MELODRAMA.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +The sun was setting in its wonted west,<br> +When HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores,<br> +Met MAHRY DAUBIGNY, the Village Rose,<br> +Under the Wizard’s Oak - old trysting-place<br> +Of those who loved in rosy Aquitaine.<br> +<br> +They thought themselves unwatched, but they were not;<br> +For HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores,<br> +Found in LIEUTENANT-COLONEL JOOLES DUBOSC<br> +A rival, envious and unscrupulous,<br> +Who thought it not foul scorn to dodge his steps,<br> +And listen, unperceived, to all that passed<br> +Between the simple little Village Rose<br> +And HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores.<br> +<br> +A clumsy barrack-bully was DUBOSC,<br> +Quite unfamiliar with the well-bred tact<br> +That animates a proper gentleman<br> +In dealing with a girl of humble rank.<br> +You’ll understand his coarseness when I say<br> +He would have married MAHRY DAUBIGNY,<br> +And dragged the unsophisticated girl<br> +Into the whirl of fashionable life,<br> +For which her singularly rustic ways,<br> +Her breeding (moral, but extremely rude),<br> +Her language (chaste, but ungrammatical),<br> +Would absolutely have unfitted her.<br> +How different to this unreflecting boor<br> +Was HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores.<br> +<br> +Contemporary with the incident<br> +Related in our opening paragraph,<br> +Was that sad war ’twixt Gallia and ourselves<br> +That followed on the treaty signed at Troyes;<br> +And so LIEUTENANT-COLONEL JOOLES DUBOSC<br> +(Brave soldier, he, with all his faults of style)<br> +And HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores,<br> +Were sent by CHARLES of France against the lines<br> +Of our Sixth HENRY (Fourteen twenty-nine),<br> +To drive his legions out of Aquitaine.<br> +<br> +When HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores,<br> +Returned, suspecting nothing, to his camp,<br> +After his meeting with the Village Rose,<br> +He found inside his barrack letter-box<br> +A note from the commanding officer,<br> +Requiring his attendance at head-quarters.<br> +He went, and found LIEUTENANT-COLONEL JOOLES.<br> +<br> +“Young HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores,<br> +This night we shall attack the English camp:<br> +Be the ‘forlorn hope’ yours - you’ll lead it, sir,<br> +And lead it too with credit, I’ve no doubt.<br> +As every man must certainly be killed<br> +(For you are twenty ’gainst two thousand men),<br> +It is not likely that you will return.<br> +But what of that? you’ll have the benefit<br> +Of knowing that you die a soldier’s death.”<br> +<br> +Obedience was young HONGREE’S strongest point,<br> +But he imagined that he only owed<br> +Allegiance to his MAHRY and his King.<br> +“If MAHRY bade me lead these fated men,<br> +I’d lead them - but I do not think she would.<br> +If CHARLES, my King, said, ‘Go, my son, and die,’<br> +I’d go, of course - my duty would be clear.<br> +But MAHRY is in bed asleep, I hope,<br> +And CHARLES, my King, a hundred leagues from this.<br> +As for LIEUTENANT-COLONEL JOOLES DUBOSC,<br> +How know I that our monarch would approve<br> +The order he has given me to-night?<br> +My King I’ve sworn in all things to obey -<br> +I’ll only take my orders from my King!”<br> +Thus HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores,<br> +Interpreted the terms of his commission.<br> +<br> +And HONGREE, who was wise as he was good,<br> +Disguised himself that night in ample cloak,<br> +Round flapping hat, and vizor mask of black,<br> +And made, unnoticed, for the English camp.<br> +He passed the unsuspecting sentinels<br> +(Who little thought a man in this disguise<br> +Could be a proper object of suspicion),<br> +And ere the curfew bell had boomed “lights out,”<br> +He found in audience Bedford’s haughty Duke.<br> +<br> +“Your Grace,” he said, “start not - be not alarmed,<br> +Although a Frenchman stands before your eyes.<br> +I’m HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores.<br> +My Colonel will attack your camp to-night,<br> +And orders me to lead the hope forlorn.<br> +Now I am sure our excellent KING CHARLES<br> +Would not approve of this; but he’s away<br> +A hundred leagues, and rather more than that.<br> +So, utterly devoted to my King,<br> +Blinded by my attachment to the throne,<br> +And having but its interest at heart,<br> +I feel it is my duty to disclose<br> +All schemes that emanate from COLONEL JOOLES,<br> +If I believe that they are not the kind<br> +Of schemes that our good monarch would approve.”<br> +<br> +“But how,” said Bedford’s Duke, “do you propose<br> +That we should overthrow your Colonel’s scheme?”<br> +And HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores,<br> +Replied at once with never-failing tact:<br> +“Oh, sir, I know this cursed country well.<br> +Entrust yourself and all your host to me;<br> +I’ll lead you safely by a secret path<br> +Into the heart of COLONEL JOOLES’ array,<br> +And you can then attack them unprepared,<br> +And slay my fellow-countrymen unarmed.”<br> +<br> +The thing was done. The DUKE of BEDFORD gave<br> +The order, and two thousand fighting men<br> +Crept silently into the Gallic camp,<br> +And slew the Frenchmen as they lay asleep;<br> +And Bedford’s haughty Duke slew COLONEL JOOLES,<br> +And gave fair MAHRY, pride of Aquitaine,<br> +To HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: ETIQUETTE. <a name="citation15"></a><a href="#footnote15">{15}</a><br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +The<i> Ballyshannon</i> foundered off the coast of Cariboo,<br> +And down in fathoms many went the captain and the crew;<br> +Down went the owners - greedy men whom hope of gain allured:<br> +Oh, dry the starting tear, for they were heavily insured.<br> +<br> +Besides the captain and the mate, the owners and the crew,<br> +The passengers were also drowned excepting only two:<br> +Young PETER GRAY, who tasted teas for BAKER, CROOP, AND CO.,<br> +And SOMERS, who from Eastern shores imported indigo.<br> +<br> +These passengers, by reason of their clinging to a mast,<br> +Upon a desert island were eventually cast.<br> +They hunted for their meals, as ALEXANDER SELKIRK used,<br> +But they couldn’t chat together - they had not been introduced.<br> +<br> +For PETER GRAY, and SOMERS too, though certainly in trade,<br> +Were properly particular about the friends they made;<br> +And somehow thus they settled it without a word of mouth -<br> +That GRAY should take the northern half, while SOMERS took the south.<br> +<br> +On PETER’S portion oysters grew - a delicacy rare,<br> +But oysters were a delicacy PETER couldn’t bear.<br> +On SOMERS’ side was turtle, on the shingle lying thick,<br> +Which SOMERS couldn’t eat, because it always made him sick.<br> +<br> +GRAY gnashed his teeth with envy as he saw a mighty store<br> +Of turtle unmolested on his fellow-creature’s shore.<br> +The oysters at his feet aside impatiently he shoved,<br> +For turtle and his mother were the only things he loved.<br> +<br> +And SOMERS sighed in sorrow as he settled in the south,<br> +For the thought of PETER’S oysters brought the water to his mouth.<br> +He longed to lay him down upon the shelly bed, and stuff:<br> +He had often eaten oysters, but had never had enough.<br> +<br> +How they wished an introduction to each other they had had<br> +When on board the <i>Ballyshannon</i>! And it drove them nearly +mad<br> +To think how very friendly with each other they might get,<br> +If it wasn’t for the arbitrary rule of etiquette!<br> +<br> +One day, when out a-hunting for the <i>mus ridiculus,<br> +</i>GRAY overheard his fellow-man soliloquizing thus:<br> +“I wonder how the playmates of my youth are getting on,<br> +M’CONNELL, S. B. WALTERS, PADDY BYLES, and ROBINSON?”<br> +<br> +These simple words made PETER as delighted as could be,<br> +Old chummies at the Charterhouse were ROBINSON and he!<br> +He walked straight up to SOMERS, then he turned extremely red,<br> +Hesitated, hummed and hawed a bit, then cleared his throat, and said:<br> +<br> +I beg your pardon - pray forgive me if I seem too bold,<br> +But you have breathed a name I knew familiarly of old.<br> +You spoke aloud of ROBINSON - I happened to be by.<br> +You know him?” “Yes, extremely well.” +“Allow me, so do I.”<br> +<br> +It was enough: they felt they could more pleasantly get on,<br> +For (ah, the magic of the fact!) they each knew ROBINSON!<br> +And Mr. SOMERS’ turtle was at PETER’S service quite,<br> +And Mr. SOMERS punished PETER’S oyster-beds all night.<br> +<br> +They soon became like brothers from community of wrongs:<br> +They wrote each other little odes and sang each other songs;<br> +They told each other anecdotes disparaging their wives;<br> +On several occasions, too, they saved each other’s lives.<br> +<br> +They felt quite melancholy when they parted for the night,<br> +And got up in the morning soon as ever it was light;<br> +Each other’s pleasant company they reckoned so upon,<br> +And all because it happened that they both knew ROBINSON!<br> +<br> +They lived for many years on that inhospitable shore,<br> +And day by day they learned to love each other more and more.<br> +At last, to their astonishment, on getting up one day,<br> +They saw a frigate anchored in the offing of the bay.<br> +<br> +To PETER an idea occurred. “Suppose we cross the main?<br> +So good an opportunity may not be found again.”<br> +And SOMERS thought a minute, then ejaculated, “Done!<br> +I wonder how my business in the City’s getting on?”<br> +<br> +“But stay,” said Mr. PETER: “when in England, as you +know,<br> +I earned a living tasting teas for BAKER, CROOP, AND CO.,<br> +I may be superseded - my employers think me dead!”<br> +“Then come with me,” said SOMERS, “and taste indigo +instead.”<br> +<br> +But all their plans were scattered in a moment when they found<br> +The vessel was a convict ship from Portland, outward bound;<br> +When a boat came off to fetch them, though they felt it very kind,<br> +To go on board they firmly but respectfully declined.<br> +<br> +As both the happy settlers roared with laughter at the joke,<br> +They recognized a gentlemanly fellow pulling stroke:<br> +’Twas ROBINSON - a convict, in an unbecoming frock!<br> +Condemned to seven years for misappropriating stock!!!<br> +<br> +They laughed no more, for SOMERS thought he had been rather rash<br> +In knowing one whose friend had misappropriated cash;<br> +And PETER thought a foolish tack he must have gone upon<br> +In making the acquaintance of a friend of ROBINSON.<br> +<br> +At first they didn’t quarrel very openly, I’ve heard;<br> +They nodded when they met, and now and then exchanged a word:<br> +The word grew rare, and rarer still the nodding of the head,<br> +And when they meet each other now, they cut each other dead.<br> +<br> +To allocate the island they agreed by word of mouth,<br> +And PETER takes the north again, and SOMERS takes the south;<br> +And PETER has the oysters, which he hates, in layers thick,<br> +And SOMERS has the turtle - turtle always makes him sick.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: AT A PANTOMIME. BY A BILIOUS ONE.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +An Actor sits in doubtful gloom,<br> +His stock-in-trade unfurled,<br> +In a damp funereal dressing-room<br> +In the Theatre Royal, World.<br> +<br> +He comes to town at Christmas-time,<br> +And braves its icy breath,<br> +To play in that favourite pantomime,<br> +<i>Harlequin Life and Death.<br> +<br> +</i>A hoary flowing wig his weird<br> +Unearthly cranium caps,<br> +He hangs a long benevolent beard<br> +On a pair of empty chaps.<br> +<br> +To smooth his ghastly features down<br> +The actor’s art he cribs, -<br> +A long and a flowing padded gown.<br> +Bedecks his rattling ribs.<br> +<br> +He cries, “Go on - begin, begin!<br> +Turn on the light of lime -<br> +I’m dressed for jolly Old Christmas, in<br> +A favourite pantomime!”<br> +<br> +The curtain’s up - the stage all black -<br> +Time and the year nigh sped -<br> +Time as an advertising quack -<br> +The Old Year nearly dead.<br> +<br> +The wand of Time is waved, and lo!<br> +Revealed Old Christmas stands,<br> +And little children chuckle and crow,<br> +And laugh and clap their hands.<br> +<br> +The cruel old scoundrel brightens up<br> +At the death of the Olden Year,<br> +And he waves a gorgeous golden cup,<br> +And bids the world good cheer.<br> +<br> +The little ones hail the festive King, -<br> +No thought can make them sad.<br> +Their laughter comes with a sounding ring,<br> +They clap and crow like mad!<br> +<br> +They only see in the humbug old<br> +A holiday every year,<br> +And handsome gifts, and joys untold,<br> +And unaccustomed cheer.<br> +<br> +The old ones, palsied, blear, and hoar,<br> +Their breasts in anguish beat -<br> +They’ve seen him seventy times before,<br> +How well they know the cheat!<br> +<br> +They’ve seen that ghastly pantomime,<br> +They’ve felt its blighting breath,<br> +They know that rollicking Christmas-time<br> +Meant Cold and Want and Death, -<br> +<br> +Starvation - Poor Law Union fare -<br> +And deadly cramps and chills,<br> +And illness - illness everywhere,<br> +And crime, and Christmas bills.<br> +<br> +They know Old Christmas well, I ween,<br> +Those men of ripened age;<br> +They’ve often, often, often seen<br> +That Actor off the stage!<br> +<br> +They see in his gay rotundity<br> +A clumsy stuffed-out dress -<br> +They see in the cup he waves on high<br> +A tinselled emptiness.<br> +<br> +Those aged men so lean and wan,<br> +They’ve seen it all before,<br> +They know they’ll see the charlatan<br> +But twice or three times more.<br> +<br> +And so they bear with dance and song,<br> +And crimson foil and green,<br> +They wearily sit, and grimly long<br> +For the Transformation Scene.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Ballad: HAUNTED.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Haunted? Ay, in a social way<br> +By a body of ghosts in dread array;<br> +But no conventional spectres they -<br> +Appalling, grim, and tricky:<br> +I quail at mine as I’d never quail<br> +At a fine traditional spectre pale,<br> +With a turnip head and a ghostly wail,<br> +And a splash of blood on the dickey!<br> +<br> +Mine are horrible, social ghosts, -<br> +Speeches and women and guests and hosts,<br> +Weddings and morning calls and toasts,<br> +In every bad variety:<br> +Ghosts who hover about the grave<br> +Of all that’s manly, free, and brave:<br> +You’ll find their names on the architrave<br> +Of that charnel-house, Society.<br> +<br> +Black Monday - black as its school-room ink -<br> +With its dismal boys that snivel and think<br> +Of its nauseous messes to eat and drink,<br> +And its frozen tank to wash in.<br> +That was the first that brought me grief,<br> +And made me weep, till I sought relief<br> +In an emblematical handkerchief,<br> +To choke such baby bosh in.<br> +<br> +First and worst in the grim array-<br> +Ghosts of ghosts that have gone their way,<br> +Which I wouldn’t revive for a single day<br> +For all the wealth of PLUTUS -<br> +Are the horrible ghosts that school-days scared:<br> +If the classical ghost that BRUTUS dared<br> +Was the ghost of his “Caesar” unprepared,<br> +I’m sure I pity BRUTUS.<br> +<br> +I pass to critical seventeen;<br> +The ghost of that terrible wedding scene,<br> +When an elderly Colonel stole my Queen,<br> +And woke my dream of heaven.<br> +No schoolgirl decked in her nurse-room curls<br> +Was my gushing innocent Queen of Pearls;<br> +If she wasn’t a girl of a thousand girls,<br> +She was one of forty-seven!<br> +<br> +I see the ghost of my first cigar,<br> +Of the thence-arising family jar -<br> +Of my maiden brief (I was at the Bar,<br> +And I called the Judge “Your wushup!”)<br> +Of reckless days and reckless nights,<br> +With wrenched-off knockers, extinguished lights,<br> +Unholy songs and tipsy fights,<br> +Which I strove in vain to hush up.<br> +<br> +Ghosts of fraudulent joint-stock banks,<br> +Ghosts of “copy, declined with thanks,”<br> +Of novels returned in endless ranks,<br> +And thousands more, I suffer.<br> +The only line to fitly grace<br> +My humble tomb, when I’ve run my race,<br> +Is, “Reader, this is the resting-place<br> +Of an unsuccessful duffer.”<br> +<br> +I’ve fought them all, these ghosts of mine,<br> +But the weapons I’ve used are sighs and brine,<br> +And now that I’m nearly forty-nine,<br> +Old age is my chiefest bogy;<br> +For my hair is thinning away at the crown,<br> +And the silver fights with the worn-out brown;<br> +And a general verdict sets me down<br> +As an irreclaimable fogy.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Footnotes:<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote1"></a><a href="#citation1">{1}</a> A version +of this ballad is published as a Song, by Mr. Jeffreys, Soho Square.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote2"></a><a href="#citation2">{2}</a> This ballad +is published as a Song, under the title “If,” by Messrs. +Cramer and Co.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote3"></a><a href="#citation3">{3}</a> “Go +with me to a Notary - seal me there<br> +Your single bond.” <i>- Merchant of Venice</i>, Act I., sc. 3.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote4"></a><a href="#citation4">{4}</a> “And +there shall she, at Friar Lawrence’ cell,<br> +Be shrived and married.” - <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, Act II., sc. +4.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote5"></a><a href="#citation5">{5}</a> “And +give the fasting horses provender.” - <i>Henry the Fifth</i>, +Act IV., sc. 2.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote6"></a><a href="#citation6">{6}</a> “Let +us, like merchants, show our foulest wares.” <i>- Troilus and +Cressida</i>, Act I., sc. 3.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote7"></a><a href="#citation7">{7}</a> “Then +must the Jew be merciful.” - <i>Merchant of Venice</i>, Act IV., +sc. 1.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote8"></a><a href="#citation8">{8}</a> “The +spring, the summer,<br> +The chilling autumn, angry winter, change<br> +Their wonted liveries.” - <i>Midsummer Night Dream</i>, Act IV., +sc. 1.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote9"></a><a href="#citation9">{9}</a> “In +the county of Glo’ster, justice of the peace and <i>coram</i>.”<br> +<i>Merry Wives of Windsor</i>, Act I., sc. 1.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote10"></a><a href="#citation10">{10}</a> “What +lusty trumpet thus doth summon us?” - <i>King John</i>, Act V., +sc. 2.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote11"></a><a href="#citation11">{11}</a> “And +I’ll provide his executioner.” <i>- Henry the Sixth</i> +(Second Part), Act III., sc. 1.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote12"></a><a href="#citation12">{12}</a> “The +lioness had torn some flesh away,<br> +Which all this while had bled.” - <i>As You Like It</i>, Act IV., +sc. 3.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote13"></a><a href="#citation13">{13}</a> Described +by MUNGO PARK.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote14"></a><a href="#citation14">{14}</a> “Like +a bird.” - <i>Slang expression.<br> +<br> +</i><a name="footnote15"></a><a href="#citation15">{15}</a> Reprinted +from the “The Graphic,” by permission of the proprietors.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, FIFTY BAB BALLADS ***<br> +<pre> + +******This file should be named 50bab10h.htm or 50bab10h.zip****** +Corrected EDITIONS of our EBooks get a new NUMBER, 50bab11h.htm +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 50bab10ah.htm + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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