“No, no—to be a carman’s wife
Will ne’er suit Alice Payne;
I’d better far a lone woman
For evermore remain,
Than have it said, while in my youth,
My life is on the wain!”
“Oh, Alice Payne! Oh, Alice Payne!
Why won’t you meet with me?”
Then up she curl’d her nose, and said,
“Go axe your axletree;
I tell you, Joe, this—once for all—
My joe you shall not be.”
She spoke the fatal “no,” which put
A spoke into his wheel—
And stopp’d his happiness, as though
She’d cry wo! to his weal:—
These women ever steal our hearts,
And then their own they steel.
So round his melancholy neck
Poor Joe his drag-chain tied,
And hook’d it on a hook—“Oh! what
A weight is life!” he cried;
Then off he cast himself—and thus
The cast-off carman died!
Howbeit, as his son was set,
(Poor Joe!) at set of sun,
They laid him in his lowly grave,
And gravely that was done;
And she stood by, and laugh’d outright—
How wrong—the guilty one!
But the day of retribution comes
Alike to prince and hind,
As surely as the summer’s sun
Must yield to wintry wind:
Alas! she did not mind his peace—
So she’d no peace of mind.
For when she sought her bed of rest,
Her rest was all on thorns;
And there another lover stood,
Who wore a pair of horns:
His little tiny feet were cleft,
And cloven, like a fawn’s;
His face and garb were dark and black,
As daylight to the blind;
And a something undefinable
Around his skirt was twin’d—
As if he wore, like other pigs,
His pigtail out behind.
His arms, though less than other men’s,
By no means harm-less were:
Dark elfin locks en lock’d his brow—
You might not call them hair;
And, oh! it was a gas-tly sight
To see his eye-balls glare.