Come with me, little maid,
Nay, shrink not, thus afraid—
I’ll harm thee not!
Fly not, my love, from me—
I have a home for thee—
A fairy grot,
Where mortal eye
Can rarely pry,
There shall thy dwelling be!
List to me, while I tell
The pleasures of that cell,
Oh, little maid!
What though its couch be rude,
Homely the only food
Within its shade?
No thought of care
Can enter there,
No vulgar swain intrude!
Come with me, little maid,
Come to the rocky shade
I love to sing;
Live with us, maiden rare—
Come, for we “want” thee there,
Thou elfin thing,
To work thy spell,
In some cool cell
In stately Pentonville!
JOHN AND FREDDY
John courted lovely Mary Ann,
So likewise did his brother, Freddy.
Fred was a very soft young man,
While John, though quick, was most unsteady.
Fred was a graceful kind of youth,
But John was very much the strongest.
“Oh, dance away,” said she, “in truth,
I’ll marry him who dances longest.”
John tries the maiden’s taste to strike
With gay, grotesque, outrageous dresses,
And dances comically, like
Clodoche and Co., at the Princess’s.
But Freddy tries another style,
He knows some graceful steps and does ’em—
A breathing Poem—Woman’s smile—
A man all poesy and buzzem.
Now Freddy’s operatic pas—
Now Johnny’s hornpipe seems entrapping:
Now Freddy’s graceful entrechats—
Now Johnny’s skilful “cellar-flapping.”
For many hours—for many days—
For many weeks performed each brother,
For each was active in his ways,
And neither would give in to t’other.