The rustic bridge, that bound my banks
In brotherhood together,
Is torn away, and its rude planks
Are gone—“the Board” knows whither.
Away! a dire revenge I’ll brew;
My rage, meanwhile, I’ll bung tight.
That sordid “Board” the day shall rue
When next I see the sunlight.
When turbid torrents rushing pass
Adown my peeping square holes,
Right through this execrable mass,
I, madman like, will tear holes.
I’ll heave aloft the lumb’ring load,
And crashing down I’ll toss it,
Till in the middle of the road[18]
I make a “fixed deposit.”
William Selwyn.
MY “SALTED” STEED.
Oh! give me back my “salted” steed,
They said, he would not die,
They said of stable I’d no need,
But told a dreadful lie.
I let him out one moonlight night—
Upon the grass he fed—
And in the morning, cruel sight!
My salted steed was DEAD.
I bought him with a good “Bewijs,”
And thought to get my geld—
So wrote a letter in a trice,
And sent it through the veld;
But when the man who sold him came
And opened his inside—
He said the “paapjes” were to blame,
And that was how he died!