Thy changeful beauty makes me glad!
Sweet Miss Annie Cut,
O marble-browed, O apron-clad,
Sweet Miss Annie Cut!
Charmed into meekness at thy sight
Proud streams dispense their wealth aright;
The land rejoices in thy might,
Sweet Miss Annie Cut!
Their blue-eyed loves let others sing,
Sweet Miss Annie Cut,
And deem thee but a stony thing,
Sweet Miss Annie Cut,—
Ever to me shalt thou be dear,
Thee will I sing from year to year;
O love thy loving Engineer,
Sweet Miss Annie Cut!
Banghy Parcels.
A flash!
A puff of smoke!
A crash,
A general smash!
Doors splinter'd: windows broke:
A roof uplifted, clean and neat,
Some fifty or sixty feet:
Walls falling:
Men running, or sprawling:
An occasional, subsequent rumbling
Of brickbats promiscuously tumbling:
A crying, and calling,
A squalling and bawling,—
Don't think this, pray,
Any thing strange, or appalling,—
I assure you, it's quite in our usual way!
For it chanced to-day,
As we were returning
From Church, where the Rev. Dhoney, M.A.,
Had discours'd with solemnity, unction, and learning
Of death and the tomb,
And demons and doom,
And the final universal burning,
That straight in front of our faces,
Not distant three hundred paces,
We saw that sudden flare,
That roof in the air,
And those brickbats falling, like stars, in various places.
My friends in England, had you seen
This strange little sight,
You'd have certainly been
In a pretty fright,
And have thought, I ween,
As you saw the flash and heard the report,
That someone, who had his cigar alight,
Had walked into our powder-magazine.
No, no—I assure you, no!
'Twas nothing of the sort!
Again I say,
The explosion was quite in the usual way,—
A thing we've got used to long ago!
The occurrence was simple. 'Twas merely this.
A parcel arrived at the Post Office,—
A Banghy Parcel, marked, WITH CARE
(In our Indian slang
Banghy means, It is apt to bang!)
Well, bang it went!
And sent the Post Office, roof and wall,
Door, and window, and postmen, and all,
Here, and there, and everywhere!
'Twas a "bearing parcel:" it bore some
Of the very finest Petroleum,—
A sample sent
For experiment
By a Firm to a scientific gent.
—Well, well, my friends, I need hardly say
Explosions are blessings in their own way.
When one occurs, it is one of its tricks
To knock a few postmen up with the bricks,
Thus, in the Postal Service, you know,
Promotion is never very slow:
Some get promoted to heavenly bliss,
And some, on earth, in the Post Office.
—And then,
Over the graves of the dead postmen,
Consider what epitaphs one might pen!
You might write o'er the stone—
"Dear Reader, who passest by,
For the Postman's body that lies below,
Drop not a tear, nor sigh,
Nor sob, nor moan,
For his soul did go, from this world or woe,
By Banghy-post, straight to the sky!"
The Death of the Rev. Melchizedec Jones.
My readers will hear, with mournful groans,
Of the death of the Rev. Melchizedec Jones.
This gentleman, famed for learning and piety,
Belong'd to the Teetotal Mission Society,
And for the last twelve years, or more,
Laboured with zeal at Arrackpore.
I may also add that, with lonely moans,
Ten children mourn the defunct Mr. Jones:
Indeed their sorrow passes description,
And really demands a handsome subscription.