Kitabı oku: «The Bab Ballads», sayfa 2

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 their walls.”’
 
 
With barely stifled sigh
That porter drooped his head,
With teardrops in his eye,
“A many, sir,” he said.
 
 
He stayed to hear no more,
But pushed that porter by,
And shortly stood before
SIR HUGH DE PECKHAM RYE.
 
 
SIR HUGH he darkly frowned,
“What would you, sir, with me?”
The troubadour he downed
Upon his bended knee.
 
 
“I’ve come, DE PECKHAM RYE,
To do a Christian task;
You ask me what would I?
It is not much I ask.
 
 
“Release these maidens, sir,
Whom you dominion o’er—
Particularly her
Upon the second floor.
 
 
“And if you don’t, my lord”—
He here stood bolt upright,
And tapped a tailor’s sword—
“Come out, you cad, and fight!”
 
 
SIR HUGH he called—and ran
The warden from the gate:
“Go, show this gentleman
The maid in Forty-eight.”
 
 
By many a cell they past,
And stopped at length before
A portal, bolted fast:
The man unlocked the door.
 
 
He called inside the gate
With coarse and brutal shout,
“Come, step it, Forty-eight!”
And Forty-eight stepped out.
 
 
“They gets it pretty hot,
The maidens what we cotch—
Two years this lady’s got
For collaring a wotch.”
 
 
“Oh, ah!—indeed—I see,”
The troubadour exclaimed—
“If I may make so free,
How is this castle named?
 
 
The warden’s eyelids fill,
And sighing, he replied,
“Of gloomy Pentonville
This is the female side!”
 
 
The minstrel did not wait
The Warden stout to thank,
But recollected straight
He’d business at the Bank.
 

Ferdinando And Elvira; Or, The Gentle Pieman

PART I

 
At a pleasant evening party I had taken down to supper
One whom I will call ELVIRA, and we talked of love and TUPPER,
 
 
MR. TUPPER and the Poets, very lightly with them dealing,
For I’ve always been distinguished for a strong poetic feeling.
 
 
Then we let off paper crackers, each of which contained a motto,
And she listened while I read them, till her mother told her not to.
 
 
Then she whispered, “To the ball-room we had better, dear, be walking;
If we stop down here much longer, really people will be talking.”
 
 
There were noblemen in coronets, and military cousins,
There were captains by the hundred, there were baronets by dozens.
 
 
Yet she heeded not their offers, but dismissed them with a blessing,
Then she let down all her back hair, which had taken long in dressing.
 
 
Then she had convulsive sobbings in her agitated throttle,
Then she wiped her pretty eyes and smelt her pretty smelling-bottle.
 
 
So I whispered,  “Dear ELVIRA, say,—what can the matter be with you?
Does anything you’ve eaten, darling POPSY, disagree with you?”
 
 
But spite of all I said, her sobs grew more and more distressing,
And she tore her pretty back hair, which had taken long in dressing.
 
 
Then she gazed upon the carpet, at the ceiling, then above me,
And she whispered, “FERDINANDO, do you really, really love me?”
 
 
“Love you?” said I, then I sighed, and then I gazed upon her sweetly—
For I think I do this sort of thing particularly neatly.
 
 
“Send me to the Arctic regions, or illimitable azure,
On a scientific goose-chase, with my COXWELL or my GLAISHER!
 
 
“Tell me whither I may hie me—tell me, dear one, that I may know—
Is it up the highest Andes? down a horrible volcano?”
 
 
But she said, “It isn’t polar bears, or hot volcanic grottoes:
Only find out who it is that writes those lovely cracker mottoes!”
 

PART II

 
“Tell me, HENRY WADSWORTH, ALFRED POET CLOSE, or MISTER TUPPER,
Do you write the bon bon mottoes my ELVIRA pulls at supper?”
 
 
But HENRY WADSWORTH smiled, and said he had not had that honour;
And ALFRED, too, disclaimed the words that told so much upon her.
 
 
“MISTER MARTIN TUPPER, POET CLOSE, I beg of you inform us;”
But my question seemed to throw them both into a rage enormous.
 
 
MISTER CLOSE expressed a wish that he could only get anigh to me;
And MISTER MARTIN TUPPER sent the following reply to me:
 
 
“A fool is bent upon a twig, but wise men dread a bandit,”—
Which I know was very clever; but I didn’t understand it.
 
 
Seven weary years I wandered—Patagonia, China, Norway,
Till at last I sank exhausted at a pastrycook his doorway.
 
 
There were fuchsias and geraniums, and daffodils and myrtle,
So I entered, and I ordered half a basin of mock turtle.
 
 
He was plump and he was chubby, he was smooth and he was rosy,
And his little wife was pretty and particularly cosy.
 
 
And he chirped and sang, and skipped about, and laughed with laughter hearty—
He was wonderfully active for so very stout a party.
 
 
And I said, “O gentle pieman, why so very, very merry?
Is it purity of conscience, or your one-and-seven sherry?”
 
 
But he answered, “I’m so happy—no profession could be dearer—
If I am not humming ‘Tra! la! la!’ I’m singing ‘Tirer, lirer!’
 
 
“First I go and make the patties, and the puddings, and the jellies,
Then I make a sugar bird-cage, which upon a table swell is;
 
 
“Then I polish all the silver, which a supper-table lacquers;
Then I write the pretty mottoes which you find inside the crackers.”—
 
 
“Found at last!” I madly shouted.  “Gentle pieman, you astound me!”
Then I waved the turtle soup enthusiastically round me.
 
 
And I shouted and I danced until he’d quite a crowd around him—
And I rushed away exclaiming, “I have found him!  I have found him!”
 
 
And I heard the gentle pieman in the road behind me trilling,
“‘Tira, lira!’ stop him, stop him!  ‘Tra! la! la!’ the soup’s a shilling!”
 
 
But until I reached ELVIRA’S home, I never, never waited,
And ELVIRA to her FERDINAND’S irrevocably mated!
 

Lorenzo De Lardy

 
DALILAH DE DARDY adored
The very correctest of cards,
LORENZO DE LARDY, a lord—
He was one of Her Majesty’s Guards.
 
 
DALILAH DE DARDY was fat,
DALILAH DE DARDY was old—
(No doubt in the world about that)
But DALILAH DE DARDY had gold.
 
 
LORENZO DE LARDY was tall,
The flower of maidenly pets,
Young ladies would love at his call,
But LORENZO DE LARDY had debts.
 
 
His money-position was queer,
And one of his favourite freaks
Was to hide himself three times a year,
In Paris, for several weeks.
 
 
Many days didn’t pass him before
He fanned himself into a flame,
For a beautiful “DAM DU COMPTWORE,”
And this was her singular name:
 
 
ALICE EULALIE CORALINE
EUPHROSINE COLOMBINA THÉRÈSE
JULIETTE STEPHANIE CELESTINE
CHARLOTTE RUSSE DE LA SAUCE MAYONNAISE.
 
 
She booked all the orders and tin,
Accoutred in showy fal-lal,
At a two-fifty Restaurant, in
The glittering Palais Royal.
 
 
He’d gaze in her orbit of blue,
Her hand he would tenderly squeeze,
But the words of her tongue that he knew
Were limited strictly to these:
 
 
“CORALINE CELESTINE EULALIE,
Houp là!  Je vous aime, oui, mossoo,
Combien donnez moi aujourd’hui
Bonjour, Mademoiselle, parlez voo.”
 
 
MADEMOISELLE DE LA SAUCE MAYONNAISE
Was a witty and beautiful miss,
Extremely correct in her ways,
But her English consisted of this:
 
 
“Oh my! pretty man, if you please,
Blom boodin, biftek, currie lamb,
Bouldogue, two franc half, quite ze cheese,
Rosbif, me spik Angleesh, godam.”
 
 
A waiter, for seasons before,
Had basked in her beautiful gaze,
And burnt to dismember MILOR,
He loved DE LA SAUCE MAYONNAISE.
 
 
He said to her, “Méchante THÉRÈSE,
Avec désespoir tu m’accables.
Penses-tu, DE LA SAUCE MAYONNAISE,
Ses intentions sont honorables?
 
 
“Flirtez toujours, ma belle, si tu ôses—
Je me vengerai ainsi, ma chère,
Je lui dirai de quoi l’on compose
Vol au vent à la Financière!”
 
 
LORD LARDY knew nothing of this—
The waiter’s devotion ignored,
But he gazed on the beautiful miss,
And never seemed weary or bored.
 
 
The waiter would screw up his nerve,
His fingers he’d snap and he’d dance—
And LORD LARDY would smile and observe,
“How strange are the customs of France!”
 
 
Well, after delaying a space,
His tradesmen no longer would wait:
Returning to England apace,
He yielded himself to his fate.
 
 
LORD LARDY espoused, with a groan,
MISS DARDY’S developing charms,
And agreed to tag on to his own,
Her name and her newly-found arms.
 
 
The waiter he knelt at the toes
Of an ugly and thin coryphée,
Who danced in the hindermost rows
At the Théatre des Variétés.
 
 
MADEMOISELLE DE LA SAUCE MAYONNAISE
Didn’t yield to a gnawing despair
But married a soldier, and plays
As a pretty and pert Vivandière.
 

Disillusioned—By An Ex-Enthusiast

 
Oh, that my soul its gods could see
As years ago they seemed to me
When first I painted them;
Invested with the circumstance
Of old conventional romance:
Exploded theorem!
 
 
The bard who could, all men above,
Inflame my soul with songs of love,
And, with his verse, inspire
The craven soul who feared to die
With all the glow of chivalry
And old heroic fire;
 
 
I found him in a beerhouse tap
Awaking from a gin-born nap,
With pipe and sloven dress;
Amusing chums, who fooled his bent,
With muddy, maudlin sentiment,
And tipsy foolishness!
 
 
The novelist, whose painting pen
To legions of fictitious men
A real existence lends,
Brain-people whom we rarely fail,
Whene’er we hear their names, to hail
As old and welcome friends;
 
 
I found in clumsy snuffy suit,
In seedy glove, and blucher boot,
Uncomfortably big.
Particularly commonplace,
With vulgar, coarse, stockbroking face,
And spectacles and wig.
 
 
My favourite actor who, at will,
With mimic woe my eyes could fill
With unaccustomed brine:
A being who appeared to me
(Before I knew him well) to be
A song incarnadine;
 
 
I found a coarse unpleasant man
With speckled chin—unhealthy, wan—
Of self-importance full:
Existing in an atmosphere
That reeked of gin and pipes and beer—
Conceited, fractious, dull.
 
 
The warrior whose ennobled name
Is woven with his country’s fame,
Triumphant over all,
I found weak, palsied, bloated, blear;
His province seemed to be, to leer
At bonnets in Pall Mall.
 
 
Would that ye always shone, who write,
Bathed in your own innate limelight,
And ye who battles wage,
Or that in darkness I had died
Before my soul had ever sighed
To see you off the stage!
 

Babette’s Love

 
BABETTE she was a fisher gal,
With jupon striped and cap in crimps.
She passed her days inside the Halle,
Or catching little nimble shrimps.
Yet she was sweet as flowers in May,
With no professional bouquet.
 
 
JACOT was, of the Customs bold,
An officer, at gay Boulogne,
He loved BABETTE—his love he told,
And sighed, “Oh, soyez vous my own!”
But “Non!” said she, “JACOT, my pet,
Vous êtes trop scraggy pour BABETTE.
 
 
“Of one alone I nightly dream,
An able mariner is he,
And gaily serves the Gen’ral Steam-
Boat Navigation Companee.
I’ll marry him, if he but will—
His name, I rather think, is BILL.
 
 
“I see him when he’s not aware,
Upon our hospitable coast,
Reclining with an easy air
Upon the Port against a post,
A-thinking of, I’ll dare to say,
His native Chelsea far away!”
 
 
“Oh, mon!” exclaimed the Customs bold,
“Mes yeux!” he said (which means “my eye”)
“Oh, chère!” he also cried, I’m told,
“Par Jove,” he added, with a sigh.
“Oh, mon! oh, chère! mes yeux! par Jove!
Je n’aime pas cet enticing cove!”
 
 
The Panther’s captain stood hard by,
He was a man of morals strict
If e’er a sailor winked his eye,
Straightway he had that sailor licked,
Mast-headed all (such was his code)
Who dashed or jiggered, blessed or blowed.
 
 
He wept to think a tar of his
Should lean so gracefully on posts,
He sighed and sobbed to think of this,
On foreign, French, and friendly coasts.
“It’s human natur’, p’raps—if so,
Oh, isn’t human natur’ low!”
 
 
He called his BILL, who pulled his curl,
He said, “My BILL, I understand
You’ve captivated some young gurl
On this here French and foreign land.
Her tender heart your beauties jog—
They do, you know they do, you dog.
 
 
“You have a graceful way, I learn,
Of leaning airily on posts,
By which you’ve been and caused to burn
A tender flame on these here coasts.
A fisher gurl, I much regret,—
Her age, sixteen—her name, BABETTE.
 
 
“You’ll marry her, you gentle tar—
Your union I myself will bless,
And when you matrimonied are,
I will appoint her stewardess.”
But WILLIAM hitched himself and sighed,
And cleared his throat, and thus replied:
 
 
“Not so: unless you’re fond of strife,
You’d better mind your own affairs,
I have an able-bodied wife
Awaiting me at Wapping Stairs;
If all this here to her I tell,
She’ll larrup you and me as well.
 
 
“Skin-deep, and valued at a pin,
Is beauty such as VENUS owns—
Her beauty is beneath her skin,
And lies in layers on her bones.
The other sailors of the crew
They always calls her ‘Whopping Sue!’”
 
 
“Oho!” the Captain said, “I see!
And is she then so very strong?”
“She’d take your honour’s scruff,” said he
“And pitch you over to Bolong!”
“I pardon you,” the Captain said,
“The fair BABETTE you needn’t wed.”
 
 
Perhaps the Customs had his will,
And coaxed the scornful girl to wed,
Perhaps the Captain and his BILL,
And WILLIAM’S little wife are dead;
Or p’raps they’re all alive and well:
I cannot, cannot, cannot tell.