“Com—com—I say!
You go away!
Into two parts my head you split—
My fiddle cannot hear himself a bit,
When I do play—
You have no bis’ness in a place so still!
Can you not come another day?”
Says he—“I will.”
“No—no—you scream and bawl!
You must not come at all!
You have no rights, by rights, to beg—
You have not one off-leg—
You ought to work—you have not some complaint—
You are not cripple in your back or bones—
Your voice is strong enough to break some stones”—
Says he—“It ain’t!”
“I say you ought to labour!
You are in a young case,
You have not sixty years upon your face,
To come and beg your neighbour,
And discompose his music with a noise
More worse than twenty boys—
Look what a street it is for quiet!
No cart to make a riot,
No coach, no horses, no postilion,
If you will sing, I say, it is not just,
To sing so loud.”—Says he, “I must!
I’m singing for the million!”
THERE’S NO ROMANCE IN THAT.
DAYS of old, O days of Knights,
Of tourneys and of tilts,
When love was balk’d and valour stalk’d
On high heroic stilts—
Where are ye gone?—adventures cease,
The world gets tame and flat,—
We’ve nothing now but New Police—
There’s no Romance in that!
I wish I ne’er had learn’d to read,
Or Radcliffe how to write!
That Scott had been a boor on Tweed,
And Lewis cloister’d quite!
Would I had never drunk so deep
Of dear Miss Porter’s vat;
I only turn to life, and weep—
There’s no Romance in that!
No Bandits lurk—no turban’d Turk
To Tunis bears me off—
I hear no noises in the night
Except my mother’s cough,—
No Bleeding Spectre haunts the house,
No shape,—but owl or bat,
Come flitting after moth or mouse,—
There’s no Romance in that!
I have not any grief profound,
Or secrets to confess,
My story would not fetch a pound
For A. K. Newman’s press;
Instead of looking thin and pale,
I’m growing red and fat,
As if I lived on beef and ale—
There’s no Romance in that!