MARY ANN.
(After Mr. Tennyson's "Margaret.")
O, slipshod Mary Ann,
O, draggled Mary Ann,
What gives your arms such fearful power
To raise the dust in blinding shower?
Who gave you strength, your mortal dower,
To beat the mats as with a flail.
To lift with ease that heavy pail?
What can it matter, Mary Ann,
What songs the long-legged son of Mars—
The butcher or the cat's meat man—
Sings to you thro' the area bars?
O, red-armed Mary, you may tell
The milkman, when he fills our can,
You wonder how he has the heart
To let the pump play such a part
In milk for her he loves so well!
You stand not in such attitudes,
You are not quite so plain,
Nor so sulky in your moods,
As your twin-sister, Mary Jane,
Your face is cleaner, and your nose
Not touched with such a grimy hue,
With cold ærially blue,
Or crimson as the damask rose!
ALBANY CLARKE.
From The Weekly Dispatch, 25th June, 1882.
It is in the strongly marked individuality of some of Tennyson's early poems that we find, at once, the secret of much of his popularity, and the excuse for the vast number of parodies of his works scattered about in nearly all our humorous literature; and three of the early poems have been especially chosen by parodists as models for imitation; these are the "May Queen," "Locksley Hall," and the "Charge of the Light Brigade."
In the "Bon Gaultier Ballads" by Theodore Martin and Professor Aytoun, will be found several parodies of Tennyson, also of Lord Macaulay, Tom Moore, Bulwer Lytton, Mrs. Browning, and of Leigh Hunt, of whom parodies are rare.
Of the parodies of Tennyson, "Caroline" and "The Laureate" have already been quoted; the others are "The Lay of the Lovelorn" and "The Dirge of the Drinker," both in imitation of "Locksley Hall," "La Mort D'Arthur," concerning Mechi's steel; and the "The Biter Bit."
"The Biter Bit" is a kind of burlesque continuation of the "May Queen," the tender pathos of the original being turned into cynical indifference, whilst preserving a great similarity of style and versification.
You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear,
To-morrow 'ill be the happiest time of all the glad New Year,
Of all the glad New Year, mother, the maddest merriest day;
For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May.
* * * * *
As I came up the valley whom think ye I should see,
But Robin leaning on the bridge beneath the hazel-tree?
He thought of that sharp look, mother, I gave him yesterday,—
But I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May.
They say he's dying all for love, but that can never be:
They say his heart is breaking, mother—what is that to me?
There's many a bolder lad 'ill woo me any summer day,
And I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May.
* * * * *
TENNYSON.