Works

FROM THE COUNTESS DOWAGER OF CORK TO LADY---.


My dear Lady---! I've been just sending out
About five hundred cards for a snug little Rout--
(By the by, you've seen "Rokeby"?--this moment got mine--...

FROM ABDALLAH,[1] IN LONDON, TO MOHASSAN, IN ISPAHAN.


Whilst thou, Mohassan, (happy thou!)
Dost daily bend thy loyal brow
Before our King--our Asia's treasure!...

FROM MESSRS. LACKINGTON AND CO. TO THOMAS MOORE, ESQ.


Per Post, Sir, we send your MS.--look it thro'--
Very sorry--but can't undertake--'twouldn't do....

FROM COLONEL THOMAS TO ---- SKEFFINGTON, ESQ.


Come to our F'te and bring with thee
Thy newest, best embroidery.
Come to our F'te and show again
That pea-green coat, thou pink of men,...

I.

Haydon! forgive me that I cannot speak
Definitively of these mighty things;
Forgive me, that I have not eagle's wings,
That what I want I know not where to seek,...

April 27,1861

Eighty years have passed, and more,
Since under the brave old tree
Our fathers gathered in arms, and swore
They would follow the sign their banners bore,...

Unto what end, I ask, unto what end
Is all this effort, this unrest and toil?
Work that avails not? strife and mad turmoil?
Ambitions vain that rack our hearts and rend?
Did labor but avail! did it defend...

Tune - "Cold blows the wind."


Chorus.

Up in the morning's no for me,
Up in the morning early;
When a' the hills are cover'd wi' snaw,
I'm sure it's winter fairly.

I.
...

Wither'd with years, and bed-rid Mumma lies;
Dry-roasted all, but raw yet in her eyes.

Feacie, some say, doth wash her clothes i' th' lie
That sharply trickles from her either eye.
The laundresses, they envy her good-luck,
Who can with so small charges drive the buck....

But born, and like a short delight,
I glided by my parents' sight.
That done, the harder fates denied
My longer stay, and so I died.
If, pitying my sad parents' tears,...

Peapes he does strut, and pick his teeth, as if
His jaws had tir'd on some large chine of beef.
But nothing so: the dinner Adam had,
Was cheese full ripe with tears, with bread as sad.

Fie, quoth my lady, what a stink is here?
When 'twas her breath that was the carrionere.

I have seen many maidens to have hair,
Both for their comely need and some to spare;
But Blanch has not so much upon her head
As to bind up her chaps when she is dead.

Tom Blinks his nose is full of weals, and these
Tom calls not pimples, but pimpleides;
Sometimes, in mirth, he says each whelk's a spark,
When drunk with beer, to light him home i' th' dark.

Boreman takes toll, cheats, natters, lies; yet Boreman,
For all the devil helps, will be a poor man.

What made that mirth last night? the neighbours say,
That Bran the baker did his breech beray:
I rather think, though they may speak the worst,
'Twas to his batch, but leaven laid there first.

Of four teeth only Bridget was possest;
Two she spat out, a cough forced out the rest.

To cleanse his eyes, Tom Brock makes much ado,
But not his mouth, the fouler of the two.
A clammy rheum makes loathsome both his eyes:
His mouth, worse furr'd with oaths and blasphemies.

Money thou ow'st me; prethee fix a day
For payment promis'd, though thou never pay:
Let it be Dooms-day; nay, take longer scope;
Pay when th'art honest; let me have some hope.