"O false and fickle Nelly Gray! I know why you refuse: Though I've no feet, some other man Is standing in my shoes.
"I wish I ne'er had seen your face; But, now a long farewell! For you will be my death;—alas! You will not be my Nell!"
Now when he went from Nelly Gray His heart so heavy got, And life was such a burden grown, It made him take a knot.
So round his melancholy neck A rope he did intwine, And, for his second time in life, Enlisted in the Line.
One end he tied around a beam, And then removed his pegs; And as his legs were off,—of course He soon was off his legs.
And there he hung till he was dead As any nail in town; For, though distress had cut him up, It could not cut him down.
A dozen men sat on his corpse, To find out why he died,— And they buried Ben in four cross-roads, With a stake in his inside.
THE PRESS-GANG.