Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

God help us if we don't not cry, how are we to pursue our

callings?

I'm sure we're not half so bad as other businesses with

their bawlings.

For instance, the general postmen, that at six o'clock go about ringing,

And wake up all the babbies that their mothers have just got to sleep with singing.

Greens ought n't to be cried no more than blacks—to do the unpartial job,

If they bring in a Sooty Bill, they ought to have brought in a Dusty Bob.

Is a dustman's voice more sweet than ourn, when he comes a seeking arter the cinders,

Instead of a little boy like a blackbird in spring, singing merrily under your windows?

There's the omnibus cads as plies in Cheapside, and keeps calling out Bank and City;

Let his Worship, the Mayor, decide if our call of Sweep is not just as pretty.

I can't see why the Jews should be let go about crying Old Close thro' their hooky noses,

And Christian laws should be ten times more hard than the

old stone laws of Moses,

Why is n't the mouths of the muffin-men compelled to be equally shut?

Why, because Parliament members eat muffins, but they

never eat no sut.

Next year there won't be any May-day at all, we shan't have no heart to dance,

And Jack in the Green will go in black like mourning for our mischance;

If we live as long as May, that 's to say, through the hard

winter and pinching weather,

350

For I don't see how we're to earn enough to keep body and soul together.

I only wish Mr. Wilberforce, or some of them that pities the

niggers,

Would take a peep down in our cellars, and look at our miserable starving figures,

A-sitting idle on our empty sacks, and all ready to eat each

other,

And a brood of little ones crying for bread to a heart-breaking Father and Mother.

They have n't a rag of clothes to mend, if their mothers had thread and needles,

But crawl naked about the cellars, poor things, like a swarm of common black beadles.

If they'd only inquired before passing the Act and taken a few such peeps,

I don't think that any real gentleman would have set his face against sweeps.

Climbing's an ancient respectable art. and if History's of
any vally,

Was recommended by Queen Elizabeth to the great Sir
Walter Raleigh,

When he wrote on a pane of glass how I'd climb, if the
way I only knew,

And she writ beneath, if your heart's afeared, don't venture up the flue.

As for me I was always loyal, and respected all powers that

are higher,

But how can I now say God save the King, if I an't to be a Cryer?

There's London milk, that's one of the cries, even on Sunday the law allows,

But ought black sweeps, that are human beasts, to be worser off than black cows?

Do we go calling about, when it's church time, like the noisy Billingsgate vermin,

And disturb the parson with "All alive O!" in the middle of a funeral sermon?

But the fish won't keep, not the mackarel won't, is the cry of the Parliament elves,

Every thing, except the sweeps I think, is to be allowed to keep themselves!

Lord help us! what's to become of us if we must n't cry

no more?

We shan't do for black mutes to go a standing at a death's

door.

And we shan't do to emigrate, no not even to the Hottentot

nations,

For as time wears on, our black will wear off, and then think of our situations!

And we should not do, in lieu of black-a-moor footmen, to serve ladies of quality nimbly,

For when we were drest in our sky-blue and silver, and large frills, all clean and neat, and white silk stockings, if they pleased to desire us to sweep the hearth, we could n't resist the chimbley.

COCKLE vs. CACKLE.

THOSE Who much read advertisements and bills Must have seen puffs of Cockle's Pills,

Called Anti-bilious

Which some Physicians sneer at, supercilious,
But which we are assured, if timely taken,
May save your liver and bacon;
Whether or not they really give one ease,
I, who have never tried,

Will not decide;

But no two things in union go like these-
Viz.-Quacks and Pills-save Ducks and Pease.

Now Mrs. W. was getting sallow,

Her lilies not of the white kind, but yellow,
And friends portended was preparing for
A human Pâté Périgord;

She was, indeed, so very far from well,
Her Son, in filial fear, procured a box

Of those said pellets to resist Bile's shocks,
And-tho' upon the ear it strangely knocks-
To save her by a Cockle from a shell!
But Mrs. W., just like Macbeth,
Who very vehemently bids us "throw

Bark to the Bow-wows," hated physic so,

It seemed to share "the bitterness of Death :"
Rhubarb Magnesia-Jalap, and the kind—
Senna-Steel-Assafoetida, and Squills-

Powder or Draught-but least her throat inclined
To give a course to Boluses or Pills;
No-not to save her life, in lung or lobe,

For all her lights's or all her liver's sake,
Would her convulsive thorax undertake,
Only one little uncelestial globe!

'Tis not to wonder at, in such a case,
If she put by the pill-box in a place
For linen rather than for drugs intended-
Yet for the credit of the pills let's say
After they thus were stowed away,
Some of the linen mended;

But Mrs. W. by disease's dint,

Kept getting still more yellow in her tint,
When lo! her second son, like elder brother,
Marking the hue on the parental gills,
Brought a new charge of Anti-tumeric Pills,
To bleach the jaundiced visage of his Mother—
Who took them-in her cupboard-like the other.

66

Deeper and deeper, still," of course,

The fatal color daily grew in force;
Till daughter W., newly come from Rome,
Acting the self-same filial, pilial, part,
To cure Mama, another dose brought home
Of Cockles ;-not the Cockles of her heart!

These going where the others went before,
Of course she had a very pretty store;

And then-some hue of health her cheek adorning,
The Medicine so good must be,

353

They brought her dose on dose, which she
Gave to the up-stairs cupboard, "night and morning."
Till wanting room at last, for other stocks,
Out of the window one fine day she pitched

The pillage of each box, and quite enriched
The feed of Mr. Burrell's hens and cocks—

« ForrigeFortsett »