Then manfully within the ring each boxer kept his ground,
Bestowing wholesale pepper in each well-contested round;
And when the victory was proclaim’d, their brows with conquest crown’d,
All anger, in a foaming pot, was in an instant drown’d,
Like fine Old English Pugilists,
Men of the olden time!
But, ah, those hours flew swiftly by, of boxing annals bright,
And men began to do the thing that wasn’t very right,
And honesty from Pugilists prepar’d to take a flight,