* * * * *
THE WATCHMAN’S LAMENT.
As homeward I hurried, within “The
Wen,”
At midnight, all alone.
My knees, like the knees of a drunken
man,
Foreboding shook, and my eyes began
To see two lamps for one.
The lights burnt blue, as they’re
wont to do
When Spirits are in the wind.
Ho! ho! thought I, that’s an ominous
hue,
And a glance on either side I threw,
But I fear’d to look
behind.
A smell, as of gas, spread far and wide,
But sulphur it was, I knew;
My sight grew dim, and my tongue was tied,
And I thought of my home, and my sweet
fireside,
And the friends I had left
at loo!
And I took once more a hurried peep
Along and across the street,
And then I beheld a figure creep,
Like a man that is walking in his sleep,
Or a watchman on his beat.
A lantern, dangling in the wind,
He bore, and his shaggy and
thick
Great-coat was one of the dread-nought
kind,—
What seem’d his right hand trail’d
behind
The likeness of a stick.
The sky with clouds became o’ercast,
And it suddenly set to raining,—
And the gas-lights flicker’d in
the blast,
As that thing of the lantern and dread-nought
past,
And I heard him thus complaining—
“A murrain seize—a pize
upon—
Plague take—the
New Police!
Why couldn’t they do with the ancient
one,
As ages and ages before have done,
And let us remain in peace?
“No more, ah! never more, I fear,
Will a perquisite, (woe is
me!)
Or profits, or vails, the Charley cheer;
Then, alas! for his tender consort dear,
And his infant progeny!