50 Bab Ballads, vol 1 | Page 2

blessed himself and chuckled.
"In mildness to abound
My curate's sole design is;
In all the country
round
There's none so mild as mine is!"
And HOOPER, disinclined
His trumpet to be blowing,
Yet didn't
think you'd find
A milder curate going.
A friend arrived one day
At Spiffton-extra-Sooper,
And in this
shameful way
He spoke to Mr. HOOPER:
"You think your famous name
For mildness can't be shaken,
That
none can blot your fame -
But, HOOPER, you're mistaken!
"Your mind is not as blank
As that of HOPLEY PORTER,
Who
holds a curate's rank
At Assesmilk-cum-Worter.
"HE plays the airy flute,
And looks depressed and blighted,
Doves
round about him 'toot,'
And lambkins dance delighted.
"HE labours more than you
At worsted work, and frames it;
In old

maids' albums, too,
Sticks seaweed--yes, and names it!"
The tempter said his say,
Which pierced him like a needle -
He
summoned straight away
His sexton and his beadle.
(These men were men who could
Hold liberal opinions:
On
Sundays they were good -
On week-days they were minions.)
"To HOPLEY PORTER go,
Your fare I will afford you -
Deal him
a deadly blow,
And blessings shall reward you.
"But stay--I do not like
Undue assassination,
And so before you
strike,
Make this communication:
"I'll give him this one chance -
If he'll more gaily bear him,
Play
croquet, smoke, and dance,
I willingly will spare him."
They went, those minions true,
To Assesmilk-cum-Worter,
And
told their errand to
The REVEREND HOPLEY PORTER.
"What?" said that reverend gent,
"Dance through my hours of leisure?

Smoke?--bathe myself with scent? -
Play croquet? Oh, with
pleasure!
"Wear all my hair in curl?
Stand at my door and wink--so -
At
every passing girl?
My brothers, I should think so!
"For years I've longed for some
Excuse for this revulsion:
Now that
excuse has come -
I do it on compulsion!!!"
He smoked and winked away -
This REVEREND HOPLEY
PORTER -
The deuce there was to pay
At Assesmilk-cum-Worter.
And HOOPER holds his ground,
In mildness daily growing -
They
think him, all around,
The mildest curate going.

Ballad: ONLY A DANCING GIRL.
Only a dancing girl,
With an unromantic style,
With borrowed
colour and curl,
With fixed mechanical smile,
With many a
hackneyed wile,
With ungrammatical lips,
And corns that mar her
trips.
Hung from the "flies" in air,
She acts a palpable lie,
She's as little a
fairy there
As unpoetical I!
I hear you asking, Why -
Why in the
world I sing
This tawdry, tinselled thing?
No airy fairy she,
As she hangs in arsenic green
From a highly
impossible tree
In a highly impossible scene
(Herself not
over-clean).
For fays don't suffer, I'm told,
From bunions, coughs,
or cold.
And stately dames that bring
Their daughters there to see,

Pronounce the "dancing thing"
No better than she should be,
With
her skirt at her shameful knee,
And her painted, tainted phiz:
Ah,
matron, which of us is?
(And, in sooth, it oft occurs
That while these matrons sigh,
Their
dresses are lower than hers,
And sometimes half as high;
And their
hair is hair they buy,
And they use their glasses, too,
In a way she'd
blush to do.)
But change her gold and green
For a coarse merino gown,
And see
her upon the scene
Of her home, when coaxing down
Her drunken
father's frown,
In his squalid cheerless den:
She's a fairy truly, then!
Ballad: TO A LITTLE MAID--BY A POLICEMAN.
Come with me, little maid,
Nay, shrink not, thus afraid -
I'll harm
thee not!

Fly not, my love, from me -
I have a home for thee -
A
fairy grot,
Where mortal eye
Can rarely pry,
There shall thy

dwelling be!
List to me, while I tell
The pleasures of that cell,
Oh, little maid!

What though its couch be rude,
Homely the only food
Within its
shade?
No thought of care
Can enter there,
No vulgar swain
intrude!
Come with me, little maid,
Come to the rocky shade
I love to sing;

Live with us, maiden rare -
Come, for we "want" thee there,

Thou elfin thing,
To work thy spell,
In some cool cell
In stately
Pentonville!
Ballad: THE TROUBADOUR.
A troubadour he played
Without a castle wall,
Within, a hapless
maid
Responded to his call.
"Oh, willow, woe is me!
Alack and well-a-day!
If I were only free

I'd hie me far away!"
Unknown her face and name,
But this he knew right well,
The
maiden's wailing came
From out a dungeon cell.
A hapless woman lay
Within that dungeon grim -
That fact, I've
heard him say,
Was quite enough for him.
"I will not sit or lie,
Or eat or drink, I vow,
Till thou art free as I,

Or I as pent as thou."
Her tears then ceased to flow,
Her wails no longer rang,
And
tuneful in her woe
The prisoned maiden sang:
"Oh, stranger, as you play,
I recognize your touch;
And all that I
can say
Is, thank you very much."
He seized his clarion straight,
And blew thereat, until
A warden

oped the gate.
"Oh, what might be your will?"
"I've come, Sir Knave, to see
The master of these halls:
A maid
unwillingly
Lies prisoned in their walls."'
With barely stifled sigh
That porter drooped his head,
With
teardrops in his eye,
"A many, sir," he said.
He stayed to hear no more,
But pushed that porter by,
And shortly
stood before
SIR HUGH DE PECKHAM RYE.
SIR HUGH he darkly frowned,
"What would you, sir, with me?"

The troubadour he downed
Upon his bended knee.
"I've come, DE PECKHAM RYE,
To do a Christian