The Bab Ballads - William Schwenck Gilbert

Скачать книгу

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 array-

      Ghosts 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

Скачать книгу