“Hark! don’t you hear, my little man,—it’s striking Nine,” I said,
“An hour when all good little boys and girls should be in bed,
Run home and get your supper, else your Ma will scold—Oh! fie!
It is very wrong indeed for little boys to stand and cry!”
The tear-drop in his little eye again began to spring,
His bosom throbb’d with agony,—he cried like anything.
I stoop’d, and thus amidst his sobs I heard him murmur—“Ah!
I haven’t got no supper! and I haven’t got no Ma!!—
“My father, he is on the seas,—my mother’s dead and gone!
And I am here, on this here pier to roam the world alone;