The earl he up and says, says he,
"Dismiss them to their orgies,
For I am game to marry thee
Quite reg'lar at St. George's."
He'd had, it happily befell,
A decent education;
His views would have befitted well
A far superior station.
His sterling worth had worked a cure,
She never heard him grumble;
She saw his soul was good and pure
Although his rank was humble.
Her views of earldoms and their lot,
All underwent expansion;
Come, Virtue in an earldom's cot!
Go, Vice in ducal mansion!
BOB POLTER.
Bob Polter was a navvy, and
His hands were coarse, and dirty too,
His homely face was rough and tanned,
His time of life was thirty-two.
He lived among a working clan
(A wife he hadn't got at all),
A decent, steady, sober man—
No saint, however—not at all.
He smoked, but in a modest way,
Because he thought he needed it;
He drank a pot of beer a day,
And sometimes he exceeded it.
At times he'd pass with other men
A loud convivial night or two,
With, very likely, now and then,
On Saturdays, a fight or two.