And on looking out I saw the Tankard sitting as before,—
Sitting, squatting in the self-same corner as it sat before,—
Sitting, crying, “Pay your score!”
And the Tankard, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
In the very self-same corner where it sat in days of yore:
And its pewter still is shining, and it bears the frothy lining,
Which the night when first I drained its cooling beverage it bore,
But my mouth that frothy lining never, never tasted more,
Since it muttered, “Pay your score!”
Edmund H. Yates.