A NOCTURNE IN NOODLEDOM.
(What the Heart of the Young Masher said to the Music-hall Singer.)
(A Long Way after Longfellow.)
Air—"The Day is Done."
The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the brow of night,
Like a crape-mask drifting downward
From a burglar in his flight.
I see the lights of "the village"
Gleam through the evening mist,
And a feeling of dryness comes o'er me,
And a tiddley I can't resist.
A feeling of blueness, and longing
For a spree, and another drain;
It resembles sorrow only
As gooseberry does champagne.
Come, tip me some snappy poem,
Some iky and rorty lay,
That shall banish this chippy feeling,
And drive dull care away.
Not from the slow old stodges,
Not from the smugs sublime,
Who hadn't a notion of patter,
And were slaves to tune and time:
For, like chunks of Wagner's music,
They worrying thoughts suggest,
Dull duty, and dry endeavour,
And to-night I long for rest.
Tip a stave from some Lion Comique,
Whose songs are snide and smart,
And who makes you roar, like Roberts,
Till tears from your optics start.
Who, without thought or labour,
And "on his own," with ease,
Can whack out the ripping chorus
Of music-hall melodies.
Such songs have power to quicken
The pulse that beats low with care;
And come like the "Benedictine"
That follows the bill-of-fare.
So pick from the cad, or the coster,
Some patter—slang for choice;
And lend to the rhymes of the Comique
The tones of a stentor voice.
And our feet shall thump tune to the music,
And the bills that I cannot pay
Shall be folded up, like my brolly,
And as carefully put away.