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Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs
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"We do not offer marriage rite,
So please dismiss the notion!"
"Oh, dear," said she, "that alters quite
The state of my emotion."
The earl he up and says, says he,
"Dismiss them to their orgies,
For I am game to marry thee
Quite reg'lar at St. George's."
He'd had, it happily befell,
A decent education;
His views would have befitted well
A far superior station.
His sterling worth had worked a cure,
She never heard him grumble;
She saw his soul was good and pure
Although his rank was humble.
Her views of earldoms and their lot,
All underwent expansion;
Come, Virtue in an earldom's cot!
Go, Vice in ducal mansion!
BOB POLTER
Bob Polter was a navvy, and
His hands were coarse, and dirty too,
His homely face was rough and tanned,
His time of life was thirty-two.
He lived among a working clan
(A wife he hadn't got at all),
A decent, steady, sober man—
No saint, however—not at all.
He smoked, but in a modest way,
Because he thought he needed it;
He drank a pot of beer a day,
And sometimes he exceeded it.
At times he'd pass with other men
A loud convivial night or two,
With, very likely, now and then,
On Saturdays, a fight or two.
But still he was a sober soul,
A labor-never-shirking man,
Who paid his way—upon the whole
A decent English working man.
One day, when at the Nelson's Head,
(For which he may be blamed of you)
A holy man appeared and said,
"Oh, Robert, I'm ashamed of you."
He laid his hand on Robert's beer
Before he could drink up any,
And on the floor, with sigh and tear,
He poured the pot of "thruppenny."
"Oh, Robert, at this very bar,
A truth you'll be discovering,
A good and evil genius are
Around your noddle hovering.
"They both are here to bid you shun
The other one's society,
For Total Abstinence is one,
The other Inebriety."
He waved his hand—a vapor came—
A wizard, Polter reckoned him:
A bogy rose and called his name,
And with his finger beckoned him.
The monster's salient points to sum,
His heavy breath was portery;
His glowing nose suggested rum;
His eyes were gin-and-wortery.
His dress was torn—for dregs of ale
And slops of gin had rusted it;
His pimpled face was wan and pale,
Where filth had not encrusted it.
"Come, Polter," said the fiend, "begin,
And keep the bowl a-flowing on—
A working-man needs pints of gin
To keep his clockwork going on."
Bob shuddered: "Ah, you've made a miss,
If you take me for one of you—
You filthy beast, get out of this—
Bob Polter don't want none of you."
The demon gave a drunken shriek
And crept away in stealthiness,
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