The Humourous Poetry of the English Language

120
"It's my belief you came to break the yard!--
But, stay, you look like some poor foreign sinner--
Take that to buy yourself a shirt and dinner."--
With that he chuck'd a guinea at his head;
But, with due dignity, the Sultaun said,
"Permit me, sir, your bounty to decline;
A SHIRT indeed I seek, but none of thine.
Signior, I kiss your hands, so fare you well,"--
"Kiss and be d--d," quoth John, "and go to hell!"
Next door to John there dwelt his sister Peg,
Once a wild lass as ever shook a leg
When the blithe bagpipe blew--but, soberer now,
She DOUCELY span her flax and milk'd her cow.
And whereas erst she was a needy slattern,
Nor now of wealth or cleanliness a pattern,
Yet once a month her house was partly swept,
And once a week a plenteous board she kept.
And, whereas, eke, the vixen used her claws
And teeth of yore, on slender provocation.
She now was grown amenable to laws,
A quiet soul as any in the nation;
The sole remembrance of her warlike joys
Was in old songs she sang to please her boys.
John Bull, whom, in their years of early strife,
She wont to lead a cat-and-doggish life,
Now found the woman, as he said, a neighbor,
Who look'd to the main chance, declined no labor,
Loved a long grace, and spoke a northern jargon.
And was d--d close in making of a bargain.
The Sultaun enter'd, and he made his leg,
And with decorum courtesy'd sister Peg;
(She loved a book, and knew a thing or two,
And guess'd at once with whom she had to do).
She bade him "Sit into the fire," and took
Her dram, her cake, her kebbuck from the nook;
Ask'd him "About the news from Eastern parts:
And of her absent bairns, puir Highland hearts!
If peace brought down the price of tea and pepper,
And if the NITMUGS were grown ONY cheaper;--