A Realistic Rhapsody.

Across the wind-blown bridges,

O look, lugubrious Night!

She comes, the red-haired beauty

Illumined by gaslight!

By London's dim gaslight!

So hush, ye cads, your roar!

Behind her plumes are waving

Her oil'd fringe flaps before.

O 'ARRIET, Cockney sister,

Your face is writhed with jeers;

How awful is the angle

Of those protuberant ears!

Those red, protuberant ears!

And your splay feet—O lor!!!

My loud, my Cockney sister,

Where oil'd fringe flops before!

Ah, 'ARRIET! gracious 'eavens,

How your greased locks do glow!

I swoon! The "hodoration"

(I heard you call it so)

Sickens my senses so;

'Tis "Citronel"—no more,

That scents, like a cheap barber's,

That oil'd fringe hung before.

'ARRIET, my knowing darling,

Your eyes a cross-watch keep,

You're togged in shop-girl's fashion,

Your cloak is bugled deep,

Black-bugled broad and deep,

With buttons dappled o'er,

Good gr-racious! how it's grown, too—

That oil'd fringe flopped before!

That "bang" is awfully trying,

That odour maddens me.

By Jingo! you've been dyeing

Those rufous locks, I see,

Those sandy locks, I see,

They're darker than of yore.

Avaunt! I'd be forgetting

That oil'd fringe flopped before.