POEMS. THE LOST HEIR. "Oh where, and oh where Is my bonny laddie gone ?"-OLD SONG. ONE day, as I was going by That part of Holborn christened High, That chilled my very blood d; And lo! from out a dirty alley, Where pigs and Irish wont to rally, I saw a crazy woman sally, Bedaubed with grease and mud. She turned her East, she turned her West, Staring like Pythoness possest, With streaming hair and heaving breast As one stark mad with grief. This way and that she wildly ran, At last her frenzy seemed to reach Or female Ranter moved to preach, “O Lord! O dear, my heart will break, I shall go stick stark staring wild! Has ever a one seen any thing about the streets like a crying lost-looking child? Lawk help me, I don't know where to look, or to run, if I only knew which way— A Child as is lost about London streets, and especially Seven Dials, is a needle in a bottle of hay. I am all in a quiver-get out of my sight, do, you wretch, you little Kitty M'Nab! You promised to have half an eye to him, you̟ know you did, you dirty deceitful young drab. The last time as ever I see him, poor thing, was with my own blessed Motherly eyes, Sitting as good as gold in the gutter, a playing at making little dirt pies. I wonder he left the court where he was better off than all the other young boys, With two bricks, an old shoe, nine oyster-shells, and a dead kitten by way of toys. When his Father comes home, and he always comes home as sure as ever the clock strikes one, He'll be rampant, he will, at his child being lost; and the beef and the inguns not done! La bless you, good folks, mind your own consarns, and don't be making a mob in the street ; O serjeant M'Farlane! you have not come across my poor little boy, have you, in your beat? Do, good people, move on! don't stand staring at me like a parcel of stupid stuck pigs; Saints forbid! but he's p'r'aps been inviggled away up a court for the sake of his clothes by the prigs; He'd a very good jacket, for certain, for I bought it myself for a shilling one day in Rag Fair; And his trowsers considering not very much patched, and red plush, they was once his Father's best pair. His shirt, it's very lucky I'd got washing in the tub, or that might have gone with the rest; But he'd got on a very good pinafore with only two slits and a burn on the breast. He'd a goodish sort of hat, if the crown was sewed in, and not quite so much jagg'd at the brim. With one shoe on, and the other shoe is a boot, and not a fit, and you'll know by that if it's him. Except being so well dressed, my mind would misgive, some old beggar woman in want of an orphan, Had borrowed the child to go a begging with, but go I'll break every bone of 'em I come near, Go home-you're spilling the porter home Tommy Jones, go along home with your beer. This day is the sorrowfullest day of my life, ever since my name was Betty Morgan, Them vile Savoyards! they lost him once before all along of following a Monkey and an Organ: O my Billy - my head will turn right round — if he's got kiddynapped with them Italians, They'll make him a plaster parish image boy, they will, the outlandish tatterdemalions. Billy-where are you, Billy?—I'm as hoarse with screaming for ye, you young as a crow, sorrow! And shan't have half a voice, no more I shan't, for crying fresh herrings to-morrow. O Billy, your're bursting my heart in two, and my life won't be of no more vally, If I'm to see other folk's darlins, and none of mine, playing like angels in our alley, And what shall I do but cry out my eyes, when I looks at the old three-legged chair As Billy used to make coach and horses of, and there a❜n't no Billy there! I would run all the wide world over to find him, if I only know'd where to run ; Little Murphy, now I remember, was once lost for a month through stealing a penny bun,· The Lord forbid of any child of mine! I think it would kill me raily, To find my Bill holdin' up his little innocent hand at the Old Bailey. |