The Bab Ballads Part 2

Now FREDDY'S operatic pas-- Now JOHNNY'S hornpipe seems entrapping: Now FREDDY'S graceful entrechats-- Now JOHNNY'S skilful "cellar-flapping."

For many hours--for many days-- For many weeks performed each brother, For each was active in his ways, And neither would give in to t'other.

After a month of this, they say (The maid was getting bored and moody) A wandering curate pa.s.sed that way And talked a lot of goody-goody.

"Oh my," said he, with solemn frown, "I tremble for each dancing frater, Like unregenerated clown And harlequin at some the-ayter."

He showed that men, in dancing, do Both impiously and absurdly, And proved his proposition true, With Firstly, Secondly, and Thirdly.

For months both JOHN and FREDDY danced, The curate's protests little heeding; For months the curate's words enhanced The sinfulness of their proceeding.

At length they bowed to Nature's rule-- Their steps grew feeble and unsteady, Till FREDDY fainted on a stool, And JOHNNY on the top of FREDDY.

"Decide!" quoth they, "let him be named, Who henceforth as his wife may rank you."

"I've changed my views," the maiden said, "I only marry curates, thank you!"

Says FREDDY, "Here is goings on!

To bust myself with rage I'm ready."

"I'll be a curate!" whispers JOHN-- "And I," exclaimed poetic FREDDY.

But while they read for it, these chaps, The curate booked the maiden bonny-- And when she's buried him, perhaps, She'll marry FREDERICK or JOHNNY.

Sir Guy The Crusader

Sir GUY was a doughty crusader, A muscular knight, Ever ready to fight, A very determined invader, And d.i.c.kEY DE LION'S delight.

LENORE was a Saracen maiden, Brunette, statuesque, The reverse of grotesque, Her pa was a bagman from Aden, Her mother she played in burlesque.

A coryphee, pretty and loyal, In amber and red The ballet she led; Her mother performed at the Royal, LENORE at the Saracen's Head.

Of face and of figure majestic, She dazzled the cits-- Ecstaticised pits;-- Her troubles were only domestic, But drove her half out of her wits.

Her father incessantly lashed her, On water and bread She was grudgingly fed; Whenever her father he thrashed her Her mother sat down on her head.

GUY saw her, and loved her, with reason, For beauty so bright Sent him mad with delight; He purchased a stall for the season, And sat in it every night.

His views were exceedingly proper, He wanted to wed, So he called at her shed And saw her progenitor whop her-- Her mother sit down on her head.

"So pretty," said he, "and so trusting!

You brute of a dad, You unprincipled cad, Your conduct is really disgusting, Come, come, now admit it's too bad!

"You're a turbaned old Turk, and malignant-- Your daughter LENORE I intensely adore, And I cannot help feeling indignant, A fact that I hinted before;

"To see a fond father employing A deuce of a knout For to bang her about, To a sensitive lover's annoying."

Said the bagman, "Crusader, get out."

Says GUY, "Shall a warrior laden With a big spiky k.n.o.b, Sit in peace on his cob While a beautiful Saracen maiden Is whipped by a Saracen sn.o.b?

"To London I'll go from my charmer."

Which he did, with his loot (Seven hats and a flute), And was nabbed for his Sydenham armour At MR. BEN-SAMUEL'S suit.

SIR GUY he was lodged in the Compter, Her pa, in a rage, Died (don't know his age), His daughter, she married the prompter, Grew bulky and quitted the stage.

Haunted

Haunted? Ay, in a social way By a body of ghosts in dread array; But no conventional spectres they-- Appalling, grim, and tricky: I quail at mine as I'd never quail At a fine traditional spectre pale, With a turnip head and a ghostly wail, And a splash of blood on the d.i.c.key!

Mine are horrible, social ghosts,-- Speeches and women and guests and hosts, Weddings and morning calls and toasts, In every bad variety: Ghosts who hover about the grave Of all that's manly, free, and brave: You'll find their names on the architrave Of that charnel-house, Society.

Black Monday--black as its school-room ink-- With its dismal boys that snivel and think Of its nauseous messes to eat and drink, And its frozen tank to wash in.

That was the first that brought me grief, And made me weep, till I sought relief In an emblematical handkerchief, To choke such baby bosh in.

First and worst in the grim array- Ghosts of ghosts that have gone their way, Which I wouldn't revive for a single day For all the wealth of PLUTUS-- Are the horrible ghosts that school-days scared: If the cla.s.sical ghost that BRUTUS dared Was the ghost of his "Caesar" unprepared, I'm sure I pity BRUTUS.

I pa.s.s to critical seventeen; The ghost of that terrible wedding scene, When an elderly Colonel stole my Queen, And woke my dream of heaven.

No schoolgirl decked in her nurse-room curls Was my gus.h.i.+ng innocent Queen of Pearls; If she wasn't a girl of a thousand girls, She was one of forty-seven!

I see the ghost of my first cigar, Of the thence-arising family jar-- Of my maiden brief (I was at the Bar, And I called the Judge "Your wushup!") Of reckless days and reckless nights, With wrenched-off knockers, extinguished lights, Unholy songs and tipsy fights, Which I strove in vain to hush up.

Ghosts of fraudulent joint-stock banks, Ghosts of "copy, declined with thanks,"

Of novels returned in endless ranks, And thousands more, I suffer.

The only line to fitly grace My humble tomb, when I've run my race, Is, "Reader, this is the resting-place Of an unsuccessful duffer."

I've fought them all, these ghosts of mine, But the weapons I've used are sighs and brine, And now that I'm nearly forty-nine, Old age is my chiefest bogy; For my hair is thinning away at the crown, And the silver fights with the worn-out brown; And a general verdict sets me down As an irreclaimable fogy.

The Bishop And The 'Busman

It was a Bishop bold, And London was his see, He was short and stout and round about And zealous as could be.

It also was a Jew, Who drove a Putney 'bus-- For flesh of swine however fine He did not care a cuss.

His name was HASH BAZ BEN, And JEDEDIAH too, And SOLOMON and ZABULON-- This 'bus-directing Jew.

The Bishop said, said he, "I'll see what I can do To Christianise and make you wise, You poor benighted Jew."

So every blessed day That 'bus he rode outside, From Fulham town, both up and down, And loudly thus he cried: