THE BOW STREET GRANGE.
By Alfred Tennyson.
With blackest mud, the locked-up sots
Were splashed and covered, one and all.
And rusty nails, and callous knots,
Stuck from the bench against the wall.
The wooden bed felt hard and strange;
Lost was the key that oped the latch;
To light his pipe he had no match,
Within the Bow Street station's range.
He only said, "It's very dreary;"
"Bail will not come," he said;
He said, "I have been very beery,
I would I were a-bed!"
The rain fell like a sluice that even;
His Clarence boots could not be dried,
But had been soaked since half-past seven—
To get them off in vain he tried.
After the smashing of his hat,
Just as the new police came by,
And took him into custody,
He thought, I've been a precious flat,
He only said, "The cell is dreary;"
"Bail cometh not," he said;
He said, "I must be very beery,
I wish I were in bed!"
Upon the middle of the night,
Waking, he heard a stunning row;
Some jolly cocks sang out till light,
And would not keep still anyhow.
He wished to bribe, but had no change
Within his pockets, all forlorn,
And so he kept awake till morn
Within that lonely Bow Street grange.
He only said, "The cell is dreary;"
"Bail cometh not," he said;
He said, "I must be very beery,
I'd rather be in bed!"
All night within that gloomy cell
The keys within the padlock creaked;
The tipsy 'gents' bawled out as well,
And in the dungeons yelled and shrieked.
Policemen slyly prowled about;
Their faces glimmered through the door,
But brought not, though he did implore,
One humble glass of cold without.
He only said, "The night is dreary;"
"Bail cometh not," he said;
He said, "I have been very beery,
I would I were in bed!"
At morn, the noise of boys aloof,
Inspectors' orders, and the chaff
Of cads upon the busses' roof,
To Poplar bound, too much by half
Did prove; but most he loathed the hour
When Mr. Jardine chose to say
Five shillings he would have to pay,
Now he was in policeman's power.
Then said he, "This is very dreary;"
"Bail will not come," he said;
He said, "I'll never more get beery,
But go straight home to bed!"
In 1855, Messrs. G. Routledge & Co., published a small volume, by Frank E. Smedley and Edmund Hodgson Yates, entitled Mirth and Metre, which contained several excellent parodies, one entitled Boreäna, after the The Ballad of Oriana; and another, called Vauxhall, which imitated Locksley Hall. Most of the parodies in the book were written by Mr. Edmund H. Yates, but he gave the credit of Boreäna to Mr. Frank Smedley, the author of several well-known novels, who died in May, 1864.