The Bab Ballads, vol 2 | Page 2

a wedding ring?
It was a tempting ickle
sing!
"Well, well, the chaplain I will seek,
We'll all be married this day
week
At yonder church upon the hill;
It is my duty, and I will!"
The sisters, cousins, aunts, and niece,
And widowed Ma of
CAPTAIN REECE,
Attended there as they were bid;
It was their
duty, and they did.
The Rival Curates

List while the poet trolls
Of MR. CLAYTON HOOPER,
Who had a
cure of souls
At Spiffton-extra-Sooper.
He lived on curds and whey,
And daily sang their praises,
And then
he'd go and play
With buttercups and daisies.
Wild croquet HOOPER banned,
And all the sports of Mammon,
He
warred with cribbage, and
He exorcised backgammon.
His helmet was a glance
That spoke of holy gladness;
A saintly
smile his lance;
His shield a tear of sadness.
His Vicar smiled to see
This armour on him buckled:
With
pardonable glee
He 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.
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!
General John
The bravest names for fire and flames
And all that mortal durst,

Were GENERAL JOHN and PRIVATE JAMES,
Of the
Sixty-seventy-first.
GENERAL JOHN was a soldier tried,
A chief of warlike dons;
A

haughty stride and a withering pride
Were MAJOR-GENERAL
JOHN'S.
A sneer would play on his martial phiz,
Superior birth to show;

"Pish!" was a favourite word of his,
And he often said "Ho! ho!"
FULL-PRIVATE JAMES described might be,
As a man of a
mournful mind;
No characteristic trait had he
Of any distinctive
kind.
From the ranks, one day, cried PRIVATE JAMES,
"Oh!
MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN,
I've doubts of our respective names,

My mournful mind upon.
"A glimmering thought occurs to me
(Its source I can't unearth),

But I've a kind of a notion we
Were cruelly changed at birth.
"I've a strange idea that each other's names
We've each of us here got
on.
Such things have been," said PRIVATE JAMES.
"They have!"
sneered GENERAL JOHN.
"My GENERAL JOHN, I swear upon
My oath I think 'tis so--"

"Pish!" proudly sneered his GENERAL JOHN,
And he also said "Ho!
ho!"
"My GENERAL JOHN! my GENERAL JOHN!
My GENERAL
JOHN!" quoth he,
"This aristocratical sneer upon
Your face I blush
to see!
"No truly great or generous cove
Deserving of them names,
Would
sneer at a fixed idea