THE HAIR OF THE DEAD.
PILE it up,
Pile it up,
Till it towers above;
Pile it up,
Pile it up,
'Tis a labour of love:
Pin it so carefully,
Cannot be known
Of that temple of hair fully
Half's not your own.
That dark plaited mass,
So dear and so rare:
That highly-prized mass,
Is a dead woman's hair.
Maybe she was poor,
With no money or purse;
Homeless and fasting,
A vagrant, or worse—
A sport for the wind,
As it listlessly blew,
And who from her kind,
No sympathy knew.
Who knows how she died?
Perchance of her life,
O'er burdened with strife,
She grew weary and cried—
"To death's awful mystery swift to be hurled
Anywhere, anywhere out of the world."
Then when the dark waters
Had closed o'er her head,
And this type of Eve's daughters
Was told with the dead;
Then when her poor body
Was borne by the wave
To the shore; they allowed her
A wanderer's grave.
Nor perfect, indeed,
Could she enter it there;
In their terrible greed
They must clip off her hair;
In their venomous greed
They must steal off her hair.
* * * *
What do we care
That this long flowing curl,
Such a charm to a girl,
Is a dead woman's hair?
Our changeable sex,
Do as fashion directs;
And so long as the hair
Is a grace to the head,
So long will we wear
The locks of the dead.
The Figaro, May 5, 1875.
(At that date ladies were wearing very large chignons).
On the occasion of an inebriated "swell" being expelled from the Prince of Wales's Theatre, by P. C. 22 Z.:—
Take him up tendahly,
Lift him with caah;
Clothes are made slendahly
Now, and will taah!
Punch not that nob of his,
Thus I imploah;
Pick up that bob of his,
Dropped on the floah!
Pwaps he's a sister,
Pwaps he's a bwother,
Come to the play with him—
Let 'em away with him—
One or the other.
Ram his hat lightly,
Yet firmly and tightly,
Ovah his head.
Turn his coat-collah back,
Get his half-dollah back.
22 Z.