I should be glad to drink your honor's health in A pot of beer, if you will give me sixpence; But for my part, I never love to meddle With politics, sir.
FRIEND OF HUMANITY. I give thee sixpence! I will see thee damned first,— Wretch! whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance,— Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded, Spiritless outcast!
(Kicks the knife-grinder, overturns his wheel, and exit in a transport of republican enthusiasm and universal philanthropy.)
GEORGE CANNING.
DEBORAH LEE [9]
'T is a dozen or so of years ago, Somewhere in the West countree, That a nice girl lived, as ye Hoosiers know By the name of Deborah Lee; Her sister was loved by Edgar Poe, But Deborah by me.
Now I was green, and she was green, As a summer's squash might be; And we loved as warmly as other folks,— I and my Deborah Lee,— With a love that the lasses of Hoosierdom Coveted her and me.
But somehow it happened a long time ago, In the aguish West countree, That chill March morning gave the shakes To my beautiful Deborah Lee; And the grim steam-doctor (drat him!) came, And bore her away from me,— The doctor and death, old partners they,— In the aguish West countree.
The angels wanted her in heaven (But they never asked for me), And that is the reason, I rather guess, In the aguish West countree, That the cold March wind, and the doctor, and death, Took off my Deborah Lee— My beautiful Deborah Lee— From the warm sunshine and the opening flowers, And bore her away from me.
Our love was as strong as a six-horse team, Or the love of folks older than we, Or possibly wiser than we; But death, with the aid of doctor and steam, Was rather too many for me: He closed the peepers and silenced the breath Of my sweetheart Deborah Lee, And her form lies cold in the prairie mold, Silent and cold,—ah me!