Ballad: The Two Ogres

 
Good children, list, if you’re inclined,
And wicked children too—
This pretty ballad is designed
Especially for you.
 
 
Two ogres dwelt in Wickham Wold—
Each traits distinctive had:
The younger was as good as gold,
The elder was as bad.
 
 
A wicked, disobedient son
Was JAMES M’ALPINE, and
A contrast to the elder one,
Good APPLEBODY BLAND.
 
 
M’ALPINE—brutes like him are few—
In greediness delights,
A melancholy victim to
Unchastened appetites.
 
 
Good, well-bred children every day
He ravenously ate,—
All boys were fish who found their way
Into M’ALPINE’S net:
 
 
Boys whose good breeding is innate,
Whose sums are always right;
And boys who don’t expostulate
When sent to bed at night;
 
 
And kindly boys who never search
The nests of birds of song;
And serious boys for whom, in church,
No sermon is too long.
 
 
Contrast with JAMES’S greedy haste
And comprehensive hand,
The nice discriminating taste
Of APPLEBODY BLAND.
 
 
BLAND only eats bad boys, who swear—
Who can behave, but don’t—
Disgraceful lads who say “don’t care,”
And “shan’t,” and “can’t,” and “won’t.”
 
 
Who wet their shoes and learn to box,
And say what isn’t true,
Who bite their nails and jam their frocks,
And make long noses too;
 
 
Who kick a nurse’s aged shin,
And sit in sulky mopes;
And boys who twirl poor kittens in
Distracting zoëtropes.
 
 
But JAMES, when he was quite a youth,
Had often been to school,
And though so bad, to tell the truth,
He wasn’t quite a fool.
 
 
At logic few with him could vie;
To his peculiar sect
He could propose a fallacy
With singular effect.
 
 
So, when his Mentors said, “Expound—
Why eat good children—why?”
Upon his Mentors he would round
With this absurd reply:
 
 
“I have been taught to love the good—
The pure—the unalloyed—
And wicked boys, I’ve understood,
I always should avoid.
 
 
“Why do I eat good children—why?
Because I love them so!”
(But this was empty sophistry,
As your Papa can show.)
 
 
Now, though the learning of his friends
Was truly not immense,
They had a way of fitting ends
By rule of common sense.
 
 
“Away, away!” his Mentors cried,
“Thou uncongenial pest!
A quirk’s a thing we can’t abide,
A quibble we detest!
 
 
“A fallacy in your reply
Our intellect descries,
Although we don’t pretend to spy
Exactly where it lies.
 
 
“In misery and penal woes
Must end a glutton’s joys;
And learn how ogres punish those
Who dare to eat good boys.
 
 
“Secured by fetter, cramp, and chain,
And gagged securely—so—
You shall be placed in Drury Lane,
Where only good lads go.
 
 
“Surrounded there by virtuous boys,
You’ll suffer torture wus
Than that which constantly annoys
Disgraceful TANTALUS.
 
 
(“If you would learn the woes that vex
Poor TANTALUS, down there,
Pray borrow of Papa an ex-
Purgated LEMPRIERE.)
 
 
“But as for BLAND who, as it seems,
Eats only naughty boys,
We’ve planned a recompense that teems
With gastronomic joys.
 
 
“Where wicked youths in crowds are stowed
He shall unquestioned rule,
And have the run of Hackney Road
Reformatory School!”
 

Ballad: Little Oliver

 
EARL JOYCE he was a kind old party
Whom nothing ever could put out,
Though eighty-two, he still was hearty,
Excepting as regarded gout.
 
 
He had one unexampled daughter,
The LADY MINNIE-HAHA JOYCE,
Fair MINNIE-HAHA, “Laughing Water,”
So called from her melodious voice.
 
 
By Nature planned for lover-capture,
Her beauty every heart assailed;
The good old nobleman with rapture
Observed how widely she prevailed
 
 
Aloof from all the lordly flockings
Of titled swells who worshipped her,
There stood, in pumps and cotton stockings,
One humble lover—OLIVER.
 
 
He was no peer by Fortune petted,
His name recalled no bygone age;
He was no lordling coronetted—
Alas! he was a simple page!
 
 
With vain appeals he never bored her,
But stood in silent sorrow by—
He knew how fondly he adored her,
And knew, alas! how hopelessly!
 
 
Well grounded by a village tutor
In languages alive and past,
He’d say unto himself, “Knee-suitor,
Oh, do not go beyond your last!”
 
 
But though his name could boast no handle,
He could not every hope resign;
As moths will hover round a candle,
So hovered he about her shrine.
 
 
The brilliant candle dazed the moth well:
One day she sang to her Papa
The air that MARIE sings with BOTHWELL
In NEIDERMEYER’S opera.
 
 
(Therein a stable boy, it’s stated,
Devoutly loved a noble dame,
Who ardently reciprocated
His rather injudicious flame.)
 
 
And then, before the piano closing
(He listened coyly at the door),
She sang a song of her composing—
I give one verse from half a score:
 
 
BALLAD
 
 
Why, pretty page, art ever sighing?
Is sorrow in thy heartlet lying?
Come, set a-ringing
Thy laugh entrancing,
And ever singing
And ever dancing.
Ever singing, Tra! la! la!
Ever dancing, Tra! la! la!
Ever singing, ever dancing,
Ever singing, Tra! la! la!
 
 
He skipped for joy like little muttons,
He danced like Esmeralda’s kid.
(She did not mean a boy in buttons,
Although he fancied that she did.)
 
 
Poor lad! convinced he thus would win her,
He wore out many pairs of soles;
He danced when taking down the dinner—
He danced when bringing up the coals.
 
 
He danced and sang (however laden)
With his incessant “Tra! la! la!”
Which much surprised the noble maiden,
And puzzled even her Papa.
 
 
He nourished now his flame and fanned it,
He even danced at work below.
The upper servants wouldn’t stand it,
And BOWLES the butler told him so.
 
 
At length on impulse acting blindly,
His love he laid completely bare;
The gentle Earl received him kindly
And told the lad to take a chair.
 
 
“Oh, sir,” the suitor uttered sadly,
“Don’t give your indignation vent;
I fear you think I’m acting madly,
Perhaps you think me insolent?”
 
 
The kindly Earl repelled the notion;
His noble bosom heaved a sigh,
His fingers trembled with emotion,
A tear stood in his mild blue eye:
 
 
For, oh! the scene recalled too plainly
The half-forgotten time when he,
A boy of nine, had worshipped vainly
A governess of forty-three!
 
 
“My boy,” he said, in tone consoling,
“Give up this idle fancy—do—
The song you heard my daughter trolling
Did not, indeed, refer to you.
 
 
“I feel for you, poor boy, acutely;
I would not wish to give you pain;
Your pangs I estimate minutely,—
I, too, have loved, and loved in vain.
 
 
“But still your humble rank and station
For MINNIE surely are not meet”—
He said much more in conversation
Which it were needless to repeat.
 
 
Now I’m prepared to bet a guinea,
Were this a mere dramatic case,
The page would have eloped with MINNIE,
But, no—he only left his place.
 
 
The simple Truth is my detective,
With me Sensation can’t abide;
The Likely beats the mere Effective,
And Nature is my only guide.
 

Ballad: Pasha Bailey Ben

 
A proud Pasha was BAILEY BEN,
His wives were three, his tails were ten;
His form was dignified, but stout,
Men called him “Little Roundabout.”
 

His Importance

 
Pale Pilgrims came from o’er the sea
To wait on PASHA BAILEY B.,
All bearing presents in a crowd,
For B. was poor as well as proud.
 

His Presents

 
They brought him onions strung on ropes,
And cold boiled beef, and telescopes,
And balls of string, and shrimps, and guns,
And chops, and tacks, and hats, and buns.
 

More of them

 
They brought him white kid gloves, and pails,
And candlesticks, and potted quails,
And capstan-bars, and scales and weights,
And ornaments for empty grates.
 

Why I mention these

 
My tale is not of these—oh no!
I only mention them to show
The divers gifts that divers men
Brought o’er the sea to BAILEY BEN.
 

His Confidant

 
A confidant had BAILEY B.,
A gay Mongolian dog was he;
I am not good at Turkish names,
And so I call him SIMPLE JAMES.
 

His Confidant’s Countenance

 
A dreadful legend you might trace
In SIMPLE JAMES’S honest face,
For there you read, in Nature’s print,
“A Scoundrel of the Deepest Tint.”
 

His Character

 
A deed of blood, or fire, or flames,
Was meat and drink to SIMPLE JAMES:
To hide his guilt he did not plan,
But owned himself a bad young man.
 

The Author to his Reader

 
And why on earth good BAILEY BEN
(The wisest, noblest, best of men)
Made SIMPLE JAMES his right-hand man
Is quite beyond my mental span.
 

The same, continued

 
But there—enough of gruesome deeds!
My heart, in thinking of them, bleeds;
And so let SIMPLE JAMES take wing,—
’Tis not of him I’m going to sing.
 

The Pasha’s Clerk

 
Good PASHA BAILEY kept a clerk
(For BAILEY only made his mark),
His name was MATTHEW WYCOMBE COO,
A man of nearly forty-two.
 

His Accomplishments

 
No person that I ever knew
Could “yödel” half as well as COO,
And Highlanders exclaimed, “Eh, weel!”
When COO began to dance a reel.
 

His Kindness to the Pasha’s Wives

 
He used to dance and sing and play
In such an unaffected way,
He cheered the unexciting lives
Of PASHA BAILEY’S lovely wives.
 

The Author to his Reader

 
But why should I encumber you
With histories of MATTHEW COO?
Let MATTHEW COO at once take wing,—
’Tis not of COO I’m going to sing.
 

The Author’s Muse

 
Let me recall my wandering Muse;
She shall be steady if I choose—
She roves, instead of helping me
To tell the deeds of BAILEY B.
 

The Pasha’s Visitor

 
One morning knocked, at half-past eight,
A tall Red Indian at his gate.
In Turkey, as you’re p’raps aware,
Red Indians are extremely rare.
 

The Visitor’s Outfit

 
Mocassins decked his graceful legs,
His eyes were black, and round as eggs,
And on his neck, instead of beads,
Hung several Catawampous seeds.
 

What the Visitor said

 
“Ho, ho!” he said, “thou pale-faced one,
Poor offspring of an Eastern sun,
You’ve never seen the Red Man skip
Upon the banks of Mississip!”
 

The Author’s Moderation

 
To say that BAILEY oped his eyes
Would feebly paint his great surprise—
To say it almost made him die
Would be to paint it much too high.
 

The Author to his Reader

 
But why should I ransack my head
To tell you all that Indian said;
We’ll let the Indian man take wing,—
’Tis not of him I’m going to sing.
 

The Reader to the Author

 
Come, come, I say, that’s quite enough
Of this absurd disjointed stuff;
Now let’s get on to that affair
About LIEUTENANT-COLONEL FLARE.