Loud he sang the song Ta Phershon
For his personal diversion,
Sang the chorus U-pi-dee,
Sang about the Barley Bree.
In that hour when all is quiet
Sang he songs of noise and riot,
In a voice so loud and queer
That I wakened up to hear.
Songs that distantly resembled
Those one hears from men assembled
In the old Cross Keys Hotel,
Only sung not half so well.
For the time of this ecstatic
Amateur was most erratic,
And he only hit the key
Once in every melody.
If ‘he wot prigs wot isn’t his’n
Ven he’s cotched is sent to prison,’
He who murders sleep might well
Adorn a solitary cell.
But, if no obliging peeler
Will arrest this midnight squealer,
My own peculiar arm of might
Must undertake the job to-night.
THIRTY YEARS AFTER
Two old St. Andrews men, after a separation of nearly thirty years, meet by chance at a wayside inn. They interchange experiences; and at length one of them, who is an admirer of Mr. Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads, speaks as follows:
If you were now a bejant,
And I a first year man,
We’d grind and grub together
In every kind of weather,
When Winter’s snows were regent,
Or when the Spring began;
If you were now a bejant,
And I a first year man.
If you were what you once were,
And I the same man still,
You’d be the gainer by it,
For you—you can’t deny it—