"To wind her in her cold, cold grave,
A Holland sheet a maiden likes; A sheet of water thou shalt have;
Such sheets there are in Holland Dykes."
The Fiends approach; the maid did shrink;
Swift through the night's foul air they spin;
They took her to the green well's brink,
And, with a souse, they plump'd her in.
So true the fair, so true the youth,
Maids, to this day, their story tell:
And hence the proverb rose, that Truth
Lies in the bottom of a well.
O'ER the evils of life 'tis a folly to fret, Despondence and grief never lessen'd them yet; Then a fig for the world-let it come as it goes, I'll sing to the praise of my Landlady's Nose.
My Landlady's Nose is in noble condition,
For longitude, latitude, shape, and position;
'Tis as round as a horn, and as red as a rose,
Success to the hulk of my Landlady's Nose!
To jewellers' shops let your ladies repair,
For trinkets and nicknacks to give them an air;
Here living carbuncles, a score of them glows
On the big massy sides of my Landlady's Nose.
Old Patrick M'Dougherty, when on the fuddle, Pulls out a segar, and looks up to her noddle;
For Dougherty swears, when he swigs a good dose, By Marjory's firebrand, my Landlady's Nose.
Ye wishy-wash butter-milk drinkers so cold, Come here, and the virtues of brandy behold; Here's red burning Etna-a mountain of snows Would roar down in streams from my Landlady's Nose.
But, Gods! when this trunk with an uplifted arm, She grasps in the dish-clout to blow an alarm; Horns, trumpets, and conchs, are but screaming of crows,
To the loud-thund'ring twang of my Landlady's
My Landlady's Nose unto me is a treasure,
A care-killing nostrum-a fountain of pleasure;
If I want for a laugh to discard all my woes,
I only look up to my Landlady's Nose.
For a Company of Comedians, who performed at Winchester over a Butcher's Shambles.
WHOE'ER Our stage examines, must excuse
The wondrous shifts of the dramatic Muse;
Then kindly listen, while the prologue rambles
From wit to beef, from Shakspeare to the shambles!
Divided only by one flight of stairs,
The Actor swaggers, and the Butcher swears!
Quick the transition when the curtain drops,
From meek Monimia's moans, to mutton chops!
While for Lothario's loss Lavinia cries,
Old women scold, and dealers d-n your eyes!
Here Juliet listens to the gentle lark,
There in harsh chorus hungry bull-dogs bark;
Cleavers and scimitars give blow for blow,
And heroes bleed above, and sheep below!
While magic thunders shake the pit and box,
Rebellows to the roar the stagg'ring ox.
Cow-horns and trumpets mix their martial tones,
Kidneys and Kings, mouthing and marrow-bones;
Suet and sighs, blank verse and blood abound,
And form a tragi-comedy around.
With weeping lovers dying calves complain;
Confusion reigns-chaos is come again!
Hither your steelyards, butchers, bring, to weigh
The pound of flesh Antonio's blood must pay !
Hither your knives, ye Christians clad in blue,
Bring to be whetted by the worthless Jew.
Hard is our lot, who, seldom doom'd to eat,
Cast a sheep's-eye on this forbidden meat-
Gaze on sirloins, which, ah! we cannot carve,
And in the midst of beef, of mutton-starve !
But would ye to our house in crowds repair,
Ye gen'rous captains, and ye blooming fair,
The fate of Tantalus we should not fear,
Nor pine for a repast that is so near;
Monarchs no more would supperless remain,
Nor hungry Queens for cutlets long in vain.
PARODY ON HAMLET.
Recited in a Company of Bachelors.
To wed, or not to wed-that is the question-
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The stings and arrows of outrageous love,
Or to take arms against the pow'rful flame,
And by opposing, quench it-To wed-to marry-
No more and by a marriage say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand painful shocks
Love makes us heir to-'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd!-To wed-to marry-
To marry-perchance a scold-aye, there's the rub ;
-For in that wedded life what ills may come,
When we have shuffled off our single state,
Must give us serious pause-there's the respect
That makes the Bachelors a num'rous race-
For who would bear the dull, unsocial hours
Spent by unmarried men-cheer'd by no smile,
To sit like hermit at a lonely board
In silence?-who would bear the cruel gibes
With which the Bachelor is daily teas'd,
When he himself might end such heart-felt griefs
By wedding some fair maid?
Yawning and staring sadly in the fire,
Till celibacy becomes a weary life,
But that the dread of something after wedlock,
(That undiscover'd state from whose strong chains
No captive can get free) puzzles the will,
And makes us rather chuse those ills we have,
Than fly to others which a wife may bring.
Thus caution does make Bachelors of us all!
And thus our natʼral wish for matrimony
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought-
And love-adventures of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And miss the name of wedlock.
THE JEW BEGINNING THE WORLD
AGAIN.
Two Criminals, a Christian and a Jew,
Who'd been to honest feelings rather callous,
Were on a platform once expos'd to view;
Or come, as some folks call it, to the gallows;
Or, as of late a quainter phrase prevails,
To weigh their weight upon the City scales.
In dreadful form, the Constables and Shrieve,
The Priest, and Ordinary, and crowd attended,
Till fix'd the noose, and all had taken leave,
When the poor trembling Israelite, befriended,
Heard, by express, from Officer of State,
A gracious pardon quite reverse his fate.
Unmov'd he seem'd, and to the spot close sticking,
Ne'er offers, tho' he's bid, to quit the place,
Till in the air the other fellow kicking;
The Sheriff thought that some peculiar grace,
Some Hebrew form of silent, deep devotion,
Had for a while depriv'd him of his motion.
But by the Sheriff being ask'd aloud,
Why not with proper officer he went?
He answer'd thus, (surprising all the crowd),
With eyes upon the dying Christian bent,
"I only wait a while pefore I coes,
Of Mister Catch to puy te tead man's clo’es.”
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