Her sorrow on the sentinel
Appear’d to deeply strike:—
“Walk in,” he said, “among the dead,
And pick out which you like.”
And soon she pick’d out Peter Stone,
Half turn’d into a corse;
A cannon was his bolster, and
His mattrass was a horse.
“O Peter Stone, O Peter Stone,
Lord, here has been a skrimmage!
What have they done to your poor breast,
That used to hold my image?”
“O Patty Head, O Patty Head,
You’re come to my last kissing,
Before I’m set in the Gazette
As wounded, dead, and missing!
“Alas! a splinter of a shell
Right in my stomach sticks;
French mortars don’t agree so well
With stomachs as French bricks.
“This very night a merry dance
At Brussels was to be;—
Instead of opening a ball,
A ball has opened me.
“Its billet every bullet has,
And well it does fulfil it;—
I wish mine hadn’t come so straight,
But been a ‘crooked billet.’
“And then there came a cuirassier
And cut me on the chest;—
He had no pity in his heart,
For he had steel’d his breast.
“Next thing a lancer, with his lance,
Began to thrust away;
I call’d for quarter, but, alas!
It was not Quarter-day.
“He ran his spear right through my arm,
Just here above the joint:—
O Patty dear, it was no joke,
Although it had a point.