The Bab Ballads, vol 2 | Page 4

the
dickey!
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 arrayGhosts
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
classical ghost that BRUTUS dared
Was the ghost of his "Caesar"
unprepared,
I'm sure I pity BRUTUS.
I pass 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
gushing 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:
"His name is HASH BAZ BEN,
And JEDEDIAH too,
And
SOLOMON and ZABULON--
This 'bus-directing Jew."
At first the 'busman smiled,
And rather liked the fun--
He merely
smiled, that Hebrew child,
And said, "Eccentric one!"
And gay young dogs would wait
To see the 'bus go by
(These gay
young dogs, in striking togs),
To hear the Bishop cry:
"Observe his grisly beard,
His race it clearly shows,
He sticks no
fork in ham or pork--
Observe, my friends, his nose.

"His name is HASH BAZ BEN,
And JEDEDIAH too,
And
SOLOMON and ZABULON--
This 'bus-directing Jew."
But though at first amused,
Yet after seven years,
This Hebrew
child got rather riled,
And melted into tears.
He really almost feared
To leave his poor abode,
His nose, and
name, and beard became
A byword on that road.
At length he swore an oath,
The reason he would know--
"I'll call
and see why ever he
Does persecute me so!"
The good old Bishop sat
On his ancestral chair,
The 'busman came,
sent up his name,
And laid his grievance bare.
"Benighted Jew," he said
(The good old Bishop did),
"Be Christian,
you, instead of Jew--
Become a Christian kid!
"I'll ne'er annoy you more."
"Indeed?" replied the Jew;
"Shall I be
freed?" "You will, indeed!"
Then "Done!" said he, "with you!"
The organ which, in man,
Between the eyebrows grows,
Fell from
his face, and in its place
He found a Christian nose.
His tangled Hebrew beard,
Which to his waist came down,
Was
now a pair of whiskers fair--
His name ADOLPHUS BROWN!
He wedded in a year
That prelate's daughter JANE,
He's grown
quite fair--has auburn hair--
His wife is far from plain.
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