Here are four lines from a travesty of Tennyson’s May Queen—
‘You may lay me in my bed, mother—my head is throbbing sore;
And mother, prithee, let the sheets be duly aired before;
And if you’d do a kindness to your poor desponding child,
Draw me a pot of beer, mother—and, mother, draw it mild.’
It is not necessary to name the original of the following. We quote two of the three verses which compose the whole:
He wore a brace of pistols, the night when first we met;
His deep-lined brow was frowning beneath his wig of jet;
His footsteps had the moodiness, his voice the hollow tone,
Of a bandit chief, who feels remorse, and tears his hair alone.