The Bab Ballads, vol 2 | Page 3

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!
John And Freddy
JOHN courted lovely MARY ANN,?So likewise did his brother, FREDDY.?FRED was a very soft young man,?While JOHN, though quick, was most unsteady.
FRED was a graceful kind of youth,?But JOHN was very much the strongest.?"Oh, dance away," said she, "in truth,?I'll marry him who dances longest."
JOHN tries the maiden's taste to strike?With gay, grotesque, outrageous dresses,?And dances comically, like?CLODOCHE AND Co., at the Princess's.
But FREDDY tries another style,?He knows some graceful steps and does 'em--?A breathing Poem--Woman's smile--?A man all poesy and buzzem.
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 passed 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 DICKEY 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 knob,?Sit in peace on his cob?While a beautiful Saracen maiden?Is whipped by a Saracen snob?
"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 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