More Bab Ballads

He up, and he says, says he, “O crew of the Hot Cross Bun,
Here is the wife of my heart, for the Church has made us one!”
And as he uttered the word, the crew went out of their wits,
And all fell down in so many separate fainting-fits.

And then their hair came down, or off, as the case might be,
And lo! the rest of the crew were simple girls, like me,
Who all had fled from their homes in a sailor’s blue array,
To follow the shifting fate of kind LIEUTENANT BELAYE.

* * * * * * * *

It’s strange to think that I should ever have loved young men,
But I’m speaking of ten years past—I was barely sixty then,
And now my cheeks are furrowed with grief and age, I trow!
And poor POLL PINEAPPLE’S eyes have lost their lustre now!

Ballad: The Two Ogres

Good children, list, if you’re inclined,
And wicked children too—
This pretty ballad is designed
Especially for you.

Two ogres dwelt in Wickham Wold—
Each traits distinctive had:
The younger was as good as gold,
The elder was as bad.

A wicked, disobedient son
Was JAMES M’ALPINE, and
A contrast to the elder one,
Good APPLEBODY BLAND.

M’ALPINE—brutes like him are few—
In greediness delights,
A melancholy victim to
Unchastened appetites.

Good, well-bred children every day
He ravenously ate,—
All boys were fish who found their way
Into M’ALPINE’S net:

Boys whose good breeding is innate,
Whose sums are always right;
And boys who don’t expostulate
When sent to bed at night;

And kindly boys who never search
The nests of birds of song;
And serious boys for whom, in church,
No sermon is too long.

Contrast with JAMES’S greedy haste
And comprehensive hand,
The nice discriminating taste
Of APPLEBODY BLAND.

BLAND only eats bad boys, who swear—
Who can behave, but don’t—
Disgraceful lads who say “don’t care,”
And “shan’t,” and “can’t,” and “won’t.”

Who wet their shoes and learn to box,
And say what isn’t true,
Who bite their nails and jam their frocks,
And make long noses too;

Who kick a nurse’s aged shin,
And sit in sulky mopes;
And boys who twirl poor kittens in
Distracting zoëtropes.

But JAMES, when he was quite a youth,
Had often been to school,
And though so bad, to tell the truth,
He wasn’t quite a fool.

At logic few with him could vie;
To his peculiar sect
He could propose a fallacy
With singular effect.

So, when his Mentors said, “Expound—
Why eat good children—why?”
Upon his Mentors he would round
With this absurd reply:

“I have been taught to love the good—
The pure—the unalloyed—
And wicked boys, I’ve understood,
I always should avoid.

“Why do I eat good children—why?
Because I love them so!”
(But this was empty sophistry,
As your Papa can show.)