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POMPEY'S GHOST.

A PATHETIC BALLAD.

“Skins may differ, but affection

Dwells in white and black the same."

COWPER.

"T was twelve o'clock, not twelve at night,

But twelve o'clock at noon; Because the sun was shining bright

A

And not the silver moon.

proper time for friends to call,

Or Pots, or Penny Post;

When, lo! as Phoebe sat at work,

She saw her Pompey's Ghost!

Now, when a female has a call
From people that are dead;
Like Paris ladies, she receives
Her visitors in bed.

But Pompey's spirit would not come
Like spirits that are white,
Because he was a Blackamoor,
And would n't show at night!

But of all unexpected things

That happen to us here, The most unpleasant is a rise In what is very dear.

So Phoebe screamed an awful scream

To prove the seaman's text;

That after black appearances,
White squalls will follow next.

"Oh, Phoebe, dear! oh, Phoebe, dear!
Don't go to scream or faint;
You think because I'm black I am
The Devil, but I ain't!

Behind the heels of Lady Lambe
I walked while I had breath;
But that is past, and I am now
A-walking after Death!

"No murder, though, I come to tell,
By base and bloody crime;
So Phoebe, dear, put off your fits
To some more fitting time.

No Coroner, like a boatswain's mate,

My body need attack,

With his round dozen to find out
Why I have died so black.

"One Sunday, shortly after tea, My skin began to burn

As if I had in my inside

A heater, like the urn. Delirious in the night I grew,

And as I lay in bed,

They say I gathered all the wool
You see upon my head.

"His Lordship for his doctor sent,
My treatment to begin ;—

I wish that he had called him out,
Before he called him in!

For though to physic he was bred,
And passed at Surgeon's Hall,

To make his post a sinecure

He never cured at all!

"The doctor looked about my breast, And then about my back,

And then he shook his head and said 'Your case looks very black.' And first he sent me hot cayenne

And then gamboge to swallow, But still my fever would not turn To Scarlet or to Yellow !

"With madder and with turmeric,
He made his next attack;
But neither he nor all his drugs
Could stop my dying black.

At last I got so sick of life,

And sick of being dosed,

One Monday morning I gave up
My physic and the ghost!

"Oh. Phoebe, dear, what pain it was To sever every tie!

You know black beetles feel as much
As giants when they die.
And if there is a bridal bed,
Or bride of little worth,
It's lying in a bed of mould,
Along with Mother Earth.

"Alas; some happy, happy day,
In church I hoped to stand,
And like a muff of sable skin
Receive your lily hand.

But sternly with that piebald match,
My fate untimely clashes,

For now, like Pompe-double-i,

I'm sleeping in my ashes!

"And now farewell! a last farewell! I'm wanted down below,

And have but time enough to add
One word before I go—

In mourning crape and bombazine
Ne'er spend your precious pelf—

Don't

go in black for me-for I Can do it for myself.

"Henceforth within my grave I rest,

But Death who there inherits, Allowed my spirit leave to come, You seemed so out of spirits: But do not sigh, and do not cry, By grief too much engrossed, Nor for a ghost of color, turn The color of a ghost!

"Again, farewell, my Phoebe, dear!
Once more a last adieu !
For I must make myself as scarce

As swans of sable hue."

From black to gray, from gray to nought,

The shape began to fade

And, like an egg, though not so white,
The Ghost was newly laid!

EPIGRAM.

ON A LATE CATTLE SHOW IN SMITHFIELD.

OLD Farmer Bull is taken sick,
Yet not with any sudden trick

Of fever, or his old dyspepsy;
But having seen the foreign stock,
It gave his system such a shock

He had a fit of cattle-epsy!

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