More Bab Ballads - William Schwenck Gilbert 2 стр.

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 loverOLIVER.

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,
Hed 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 NEIDERMEYERS opera.

(Therein a stable boy, its 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 Esmeraldas 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 wouldnt 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,
Dont give your indignation vent;
I fear you think Im 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 fancydo
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 Im prepared to bet a guinea,
Were this a mere dramatic case,
The page would have eloped with MINNIE,
But, nohe only left his place.

The simple Truth is my detective,
With me Sensation cant abide;
The Likely beats the mere Effective,
And Nature is my only guide.

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.

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

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.

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.

My tale is not of theseoh no!
I only mention them to show
The divers gifts that divers men
Brought oer the sea to BAILEY BEN.

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.

A dreadful legend you might trace
In SIMPLE JAMESS honest face,
For there you read, in Natures print,
A Scoundrel of the Deepest Tint.

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.

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.

But thereenough of gruesome deeds!
My heart, in thinking of them, bleeds;
And so let SIMPLE JAMES take wing,
Tis not of him Im going to sing.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

One morning knocked, at half-past eight,
A tall Red Indian at his gate.
In Turkey, as youre praps aware,
Red Indians are extremely rare.

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

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

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.

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

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

The earth has armies plenty,
And semi-warlike bands,
I dare say there are twenty
In European lands;
But, oh! in no direction
Youd find one to compare
In brotherly affection
With that of COLONEL FLARE.

His soldiers might be rated
As military Pearls.
As unsophisticated
As pretty little girls!
They never smoked or ratted,
Or talked of Sues or Polls;
The Sergeant-Major tatted,
The others nursed their dolls.

He spent his days in teaching
These truly solemn facts;
Theres little use in preaching,
Or circulating tracts.
(The vainest plan invented
For stifling other creeds,
Unless its supplemented
With charitable deeds.)

He taught his soldiers kindly
To give at Hungers call:
Oh, better far give blindly,
Than never give at all!
Though sympathy be kindled
By Impositions game,
Oh, better far be swindled
Than smother up its flame!

His means were far from ample
For pleasure or for dress,
Yet note this bright example
Of single-heartedness:
Though ranking as a Colonel,
His pay was but a groat,
While their reward diurnal
Waseach a five-pound note.

Moreover,this evinces
His kindness, youll allow,
He fed them all like princes,
And lived himself on cow.
He set them all regaling
On curious wines, and dear,
While he would sit pale-ale-ing,
Or quaffing ginger-beer.

Then at his instigation
(A pretty fancy this)
Their daily pay and ration
Hed take in change for his;
They brought it to him weekly,
And he without a groan,
Would take it from them meekly
And give them all his own!

Though not exactly knighted
As knights, of course, should be,
Yet no one so delighted
In harmless chivalry.
If peasant girl or ladye
Beneath misfortunes sank,
Whateer distinctions made he,
They were not those of rank.

No maiden young and comely
Who wanted good advice
(However poor or homely)
Need ask him for it twice.
Hed wipe away the blindness
That comes of teary dew;
His sympathetic kindness
No sort of limit knew.

He always hated dealing
With men who schemed or planned;
A person harshunfeeling
The Colonel could not stand.
He hated cold, suspecting,
Official men in blue,
Who pass their lives detecting
The crimes that others do.

For men whod shoot a sparrow,
Or immolate a worm
Beneath a farmers harrow,
He could not find a term.
Humanely, ay, and knightly
He dealt with such an one;
He took and tied him tightly,
And blew him from a gun.

The earth has armies plenty,
And semi-warlike bands,
Im certain there are twenty
In European lands;
But, oh! in no direction
Youd find one to compare
In brotherly affection
With that of COLONEL FLARE.

MR. BLAKE was a regular out-and-out hardened sinner,
Who was quite out of the pale of Christianity, so to speak,
He was in the habit of smoking a long pipe and drinking a glass of grog on a Sunday after dinner,
And seldom thought of going to church more than twice orif Good Friday or Christmas Day happened to come in itthree times a week.

He was quite indifferent as to the particular kinds of dresses
That the clergyman wore at church where he used to go to pray,
And whatever he did in the way of relieving a chaps distresses,
He always did in a nasty, sneaking, underhanded, hole-and-corner sort of way.

I have known him indulge in profane, ungentlemanly emphatics,
When the Protestant Church has been divided on the subject of the proper width of a chasubles hem;
I have even known him to sneer at albsand as for dalmatics,
Words cant convey an idea of the contempt he expressed for them.

He didnt believe in persons who, not being well off themselves, are obliged to confine their charitable exertions to collecting money from wealthier people,
And looked upon individuals of the former class as ecclesiastical hawks;
He used to say that he would no more think of interfering with his priests robes than with his church or his steeple,
And that he did not consider his soul imperilled because somebody over whom he had no influence whatever, chose to dress himself up like an exaggerated GUY FAWKES.

This shocking old vagabond was so unutterably shameless
That he actually went a-courting a very respectable and pious middle-aged sister, by the name of BIGGS.
She was a rather attractive widow, whose life as such had always been particularly blameless;
Her first husband had left her a secure but moderate competence, owing to some fortunate speculations in the matter of figs.

She was an excellent person in every wayand won the respect even of MRS. GRUNDY,
She was a good housewife, too, and wouldnt have wasted a penny if she had owned the Koh-i-noor.
She was just as strict as he was lax in her observance of Sunday,
And being a good economist, and charitable besides, she took all the bones and cold potatoes and broken pie-crusts and candle-ends (when she had quite done with them), and made them into an excellent soup for the deserving poor.

I am sorry to say that she rather took to BLAKEthat outcast of society,
And when respectable brothers who were fond of her began to look dubious and to cough,
She would say, Oh, my friends, its because I hope to bring this poor benighted soul back to virtue and propriety,
And besides, the poor benighted soul, with all his faults, was uncommonly well off.

And when MR. BLAKES dissipated friends called his attention to the frown or the pout of her,
Whenever he did anything which appeared to her to savour of an unmentionable place,
He would say that she would be a very decent old girl when all that nonsense was knocked out of her,
And his method of knocking it out of her is one that covered him with disgrace.

She was fond of going to church services four times every Sunday, and, four or five times in the week, and never seemed to pall of them,
So he hunted out all the churches within a convenient distance that had services at different hours, so to speak;
And when he had married her he positively insisted upon their going to all of them,
So they contrived to do about twelve churches every Sunday, and, if they had luck, from twenty-two to twenty-three in the course of the week.

She was fond of dropping his sovereigns ostentatiously into the plate, and she liked to see them stand out rather conspicuously against the commonplace half-crowns and shillings,
So he took her to all the charity sermons, and if by any extraordinary chance there wasnt a charity sermon anywhere, he would drop a couple of sovereigns (one for him and one for her) into the poor-box at the door;
And as he always deducted the sums thus given in charity from the housekeeping money, and the money he allowed her for her bonnets and frillings,
She soon began to find that even charity, if you allow it to interfere with your personal luxuries, becomes an intolerable bore.

On Sundays she was always melancholy and anything but good society,
For that day in her household was a day of sighings and sobbings and wringing of hands and shaking of heads:
She wouldnt hear of a button being sewn on a glove, because it was a work neither of necessity nor of piety,
And strictly prohibited her servants from amusing themselves, or indeed doing anything at all except dusting the drawing-rooms, cleaning the boots and shoes, cooking the parlour dinner, waiting generally on the family, and making the beds.

But BLAKE even went further than that, and said that people should do their own works of necessity, and not delegate them to persons in a menial situation,
So he wouldnt allow his servants to do so much as even answer a bell.
Here he is making his wife carry up the water for her bath to the second floor, much against her inclination,
And why in the world the gentleman who illustrates these ballads has put him in a cocked hat is more than I can tell.

After about three months of this sort of thing, taking the smooth with the rough of it,
(Blacking her own boots and peeling her own potatoes was not her notion of connubial bliss),
MRS. BLAKE began to find that she had pretty nearly had enough of it,
And came, in course of time, to think that BLAKES own original line of conduct wasnt so much amiss.

And now that wicked personthat detestable sinner (BELIAL BLAKE his friends and well-wishers call him for his atrocities),
And his poor deluded victim, whom all her Christian brothers dislike and pity so,
Go to the parish church only on Sunday morning and afternoon and occasionally on a week-day, and spend their evenings in connubial fondlings and affectionate reciprocities,
And I should like to know where in the world (or rather, out of it) they expect to go!