The little school-boys stood about,
And laughed to see her pumping, pumping;
Now with a curtsey to the spout,
And then upon her tiptoes jumping.
Long time she waited for her neighbours,
To have their turns:—but she must lose
The watery wages of her labours,—
Except a little in her shoes!
Without a voice to tell her tale,
And ugly transport in her face;
All like a jugless nightingale,
She thinks of her bereaved case.
At last she sobs—she cries—she screams!—
And pours her flood of sorrows out,
From eyes and mouth, in mingled streams,
Just like the lion on the spout.
For well poor Bessy knows her mother
Must lose her tea, for water’s lack,
That Sukey burns—and baby-brother
Must be dry-rubb’d with huck-a-back!
A FAIRY TALE.
N Hounslow heath—and close beside the road,
As western travellers may oft have seen,—
A little house some years ago there stood,
A minikin abode;
And built like Mr. Birkbeck’s, all of wood:
The walls of white, the window shutters green;—
Four wheels it had at North, South, East, and West.
(Tho’ now at rest)
On which it used to wander to and fro’,
Because its master ne’er maintain’d a rider,
Like those who trade in Paternoster Row;
But made his business travel for itself,
Till he had made his pelf,
And then retired—if one may call it so,
Of a roadsider.
Perchance, the very race and constant riot
Of stages, long and short, which thereby ran,
Made him more relish the repose and quiet
Of his now sedentary caravan;
Perchance, he lov’d the ground because ’twas common,
And so he might impale a strip of soil,
That furnish’d, by his toil,
Some dusty greens, for him and his old woman;—
And five tall hollyhocks, in dingy flower:
Howbeit, the thoroughfare did no ways spoil
His peace, unless, in some unlucky hour,
A stray horse came and gobbled up his bow’r!