Of your full-volumed breath!
Day was a dingy white
Till you "put out the light,"
Like black Othello
When stifling his dear wife to death;
And, here, you've gone and made the comely fellow
A pretty figure, —
A horrid Nigger!
Hear me, if you're a hearkener! —
An English day at best is but a darkener
At any time o' year;
(It costs housekeepers many
A pretty pound and penny
To see that clear.)
Look through the lustrous city,
And you will think 'tis pity
That Phœbus —
So shrewd a god, good at a rhyme
And rebus —
Should waste his precious time
In trying to look down
Upon this independent town;
And pertinaciously keep poking —
(While all the city wags are joking
At his egregious folly
And failure melancholy) —
Poking his ineffectual beams between the clouds,
Hovering sootily over it in crowds
To intercept his rays,
And turn them other ways.
He ought by this time to have known —
(His chaste, night-wandering sister,
Who does contrive to glister,
She should have told him) – that London, day and night,
Is better lit by gas than by his sultry light.
Come, brighten up, great Fog, and don't look gloomy
While I can see you – for these eyes grow rheumy!
Clear up, for Heaven's and dear London's sakes:
For, while you're groping here, there's sad mistakes
Making in every possible direction,
And some without detection!
There's some one, as I've struggled through the Strand,
Has had his hand
In my coat-pocket more than half a minute,
Though there is nothing but one sonnet in it!
La! bless me! well, how odd! why, I declare
It is my own hand I've detected there! —
I think that wasn't me that trod upon my toes?
There – dear me! why I've hit some other person's nose!
Lord! how the Simpson swears,
And hits about, and tears,
While I keep snug, and leave the angry ass
Just room enough to let his passion pass,
And laugh to hear him give himself such ultra-Donkey airs!
Madam, I really beg a person of your charms
A thousand pardons
For running so unbidden to your arms!
"Och! for five fardens
Your honour's wilcum as the flowers in May
To call agin there any day!
And p'r'aps it's you don't want a basket-woman?" —
Kitty Malone, by all that's Irish-human! —
"Och! long life to your honour! May your eyes
Be iver jist as bright as the Green Island's skies,
And niver foggy!"
I add – "Nor groggy;
Ay, Katty?"
"'Od dra't ye!"
For if to Kate some female errors fall,
Pay her gin-score, and you whitewash them all.
Now, which way should I turn to escape the Strand?
"Fait', then, it's handy – turn to your right hand!"
'Gad! I'm so posed, I know not left from right;
But, here goes – anywhere! Oh, guide me, Sight!
Heaven bless me! what
Is this I've run against, and fix'd it to the spot?
Bless the dear child! you really shouldn't stand
In people's way
In such a day.
Dear me! I've stunn'd her so, she cannot speak,
Not even shriek!
How pale she turns – white as a Greenland ghost!
Oh, horror! what a hue!
What shall I – can I do!
Her face is frozen-cold – her eyes all whites!
Here, help! watch! murder! lights! oh, lights! —
Zounds! what a fool I am! Why, here have I
Been wasting all this morbid sympathy —
This tenderness and pity – on a post!
Come, that is strange and laughable enough!
Talk of the drolleries of "Blind-man's buff,"
And "Catch who can,"
This is as laughable,
And chaffable,
To a good-humour'd man! —