A Black Bird that Could Sing but Wouldn’t Sing.
(A Lyric of the American Southern States.)
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
O’er the War of the Rebellion and the things that were before;
While I sat absorbed in thinking, brandy cocktails slowly drinking,
Suddenly I saw a blinking, one-eyed figure at my door—
Saw a nasty, stinking, blinking, one-eyed figure at my door,
Standing up as stiff as steel-yards, just across my chamber floor,
Peeping in, and—nothing more.
Ah! I never shall forget it, how in glancing round I met it,