Songs that distantly resembled
Those one hears from men assembled
In the old Cross Keys Hotel,
Only sung not half so well.
For the time of this ecstatic
Amateur was most erratic,
And he only hit the key
Once in every melody.
If "he wot prigs wot isn't his'n
Ven he's cotched is sent to prison,"
He who murders sleep might well
Adorn a solitary cell.
But, if no obliging peeler
Will arrest this midnight squealer,
My own peculiar arm of might
Must undertake the job to-night.
The following fragment is but doubtfully autobiographical. `The
swift four-wheeler' seldom devastates the streets where, of old, the
Archbishop's jackmen sliced Presbyterian professors with the
claymore, as James Melville tells us:-
TO NUMBER 27x.
Beloved Peeler! friend and guide
And guard of many a midnight reeler,
None worthier, though the world is wide,
Beloved Peeler.
Thou from before the swift four-wheeler
Didst pluck me, and didst thrust aside
A strongly built provision-dealer
Who menaced me with blows, and cried
`Come on! come on!' O Paian, Healer,
Then but for thee I must have died,
Beloved Peeler!
The following presentiment, though he was no `waster,' may very well
have been his own.
Pages:
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44