THE BOHEMIAN GIRL
ADAPTED TO THE MEANEST CAPACITY
Miss Rainforth, one day
Having gone out to play,
(Then a very young lady) was hurried,
By a shocking fierce man,
From a vagabond clan,
Away to the green-room, quite flurried!
This abduction, so free,
Was lamented in D,
With a pathos quite like Catalani,
By her father, Arnheim,
Who sung out in slow time;
(Count Arnheim was play’d by Borrani).
But, lo! after act one,
Without help of the “sun,”
Or (as Wordsworth has said) of the “shower,”
This damsel so nice,
With a very sweet voice,
Grew twelve inches in less than an hour!
And, having now seen,
Summers full seventeen,
Her heart could not wholly withstand
The very soft “sawder”
Of a dashing marauder
Named Harrison—one of the band.
So the maid, in reply,
After heaving a sigh,
Sang a song—now the darling of Fame,
Which, if not quite grammatical,
Was very poetical,
That Harrison “lov’d her the same.”
As we’ve all heard a few
Of the stories so new
About gipsies and children, I ween,
I need scarcely relate,
How a fortunate fate
Gave Borrani again his Arline.
Suffice it to say,
In a summary way,
That a chain, round her neck which she wore,
By a stern new policeman,
Accustomed to seize men,
Was carried a justice before:
That she knew not the theft;
That the chain was a gift
From her supposititious mamma;
And this damsel so nice,
(With a very sweet voice)
In the magistrate found her papa!
We have then, a third act;
A most curious fact;
Which none understood, till they knew
The author had thought,
That in justice he ought
A moral to add to the two.
So a lesson he gave
(This poet so grave,)
To singers and men; and the fall
Of Miss Betts, at the end,
By the hand of a friend,
Was felt as the moral by all.
Punch, 1844.
