With whom we know not what to do from gaol released;
One of a dogged sullen air, who beat his wife and tore her hair,
And taught his children how to swear, “Down East,” “Down East.”
One night—life’s longest needs but one—he struck his wife and all was done,
From sorrow, ere the rise of sun she was released;
Oh! you talk of distant lands, of savages on Afric’s sands,
Stretch forth in Town your soothing hands “Down East,” “Down East.”
Edmund H. Yates.
From “Our Miscellany” (which ought to have come out, but didn’t). London, G. Routledge and Co., 1856.
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