Showing How He Went Farther Than He Intended, and Came Safe Home Again
JOHN GILPIN was a citizen
Of credit and renown,
A trainband captain eke was he
Of famous London town.
John Gilpin’s spouse said to her dear—
“Though wedded we have been
These twice ten tedious years, yet we
No holiday have seen.
“To-morrow...
Cologne
IN Köln, a town of monks and bones,
And pavements fanged with murderous stones,
And rags, and hags, and hideous wenches,—
I counted two-and-seventy stenches,
All well-defined and several stinks!
Ye nymphs that reign o’er sewers and sinks,
The river Rhine, it is well known,
Doth wash your city of Cologne;
But tell me...
A Conversational Pleasantry
SOME wit of old—such wits of old there were,
Whose hints showed meaning, whose allusions care—
By one brave stroke to mark all human kind,
Called clear, blank paper every infant mind:
Where still, as opening sense her dictates wrote,
Fair virtue put a seal, or vice a blot.
The thought was happy, pertinent, and...
For the Tombstone Erected over the Marquis of Anglesea’s Leg, Lost at Waterloo
HERE rests, and let no saucy knave
Presume to sneer and laugh,
To learn that moldering in the grave
Is laid a British Calf.
For he who writes these lines is sure,
That those who read the whole
Will find such laugh was premature,
For here, too...
WHENE’ER with haggard eyes I view
This dungeon that I ’m rotting in,
I think of those companions true
Who studied with me at the U-
niversity of Gottingen,
niversity of Gottingen.
[Weeps and pulls out a blue kerchief, with which he wipes his eyes; gazing tenderly at it, he proceeds:]
Sweet...
My curse upon thy venomed stang,
That shoots my tortured gums alang;
An’ through my lugs gies mony a twang,
Wi’ gnawing vengeance!
Tearing my nerves wi’ bitter pang,
Like racking engines.
When fevers burn, or ague freezes,
Rheumatics gnaw, or cholic squeezes;
Our neighbor’s sympathy may ease us,
...
Between Nose and Eyes a strange contest arose;
The spectacles set them, unhappily, wrong;
The point in dispute was, as all the world knows,
To whom the said spectacles ought to belong.
So Tongue was the lawyer, and argued the cause,
With a great deal of skill, and a wig full of learning,
While chief baron Ear sat to balance the laws,—...
To make this condiment your poet begs
The pounded yellow of two hard boiled eggs;
Two boiled potatoes, passed through kitchen sieve,
Smoothness and softness to the salad give;
Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl,
And, half suspected, animate the whole;
Of mordant mustard add a single spoon,
Distrust the condiment that bites so soon;...
MAY the Babylonish curse
Straight confound my stammering verse,
If I can a passage see
In this word-perplexity,
Or a fit expression find,
Or a language to my mind
(Still the phrase is wide or scant),
To take leave of thee, GREAT PLANT!
Or in any terms relate
Half my love, or half my hate;
For I hate, yet love,...
Friend of Humanity
NEEDY 1 knife-grinder! whither are you going?
Rough is the road; your wheel is out of order.
Bleak blows the blast;—your hat has got a hole in ’t;
So have your breeches!
Weary knife-grinder! little think the proud ones,
Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike-
Road, what hard work ’t is crying all day,...
