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 coryphée, 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 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 ’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.

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Sir Guy The Crusader

Haunted

The Bishop And The ’Busman

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