as hoarse as a crow,
  with screaming for ye, you young sorrow! 
And shan’t have half a voice, no more I shan’t,
  for crying fresh herrings to-morrow. 
O Billy, you’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 coaches and horses of, and
  there ain’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. 
For though I say it as oughtn’t, yet I will say, you may search for miles and mileses
And not find one better brought up,
  and more pretty behaved, from one end to t’other
  of St. Giles’s. 
And if I called him a beauty, it’s no lie, but only
   as a Mother ought to speak;
You never set eyes on a more handsomer face,
  only it hasn’t been washed for a week;
As for hair, tho’ it’s red, it’s the most nicest hair
  when I’ve time to just show it the comb;
I’ll owe ’em five pounds, and a blessing besides,
  as will only bring him safe and sound home. 
He’s blue eyes, and not to be call’d a squint,
  though a little cast he’s certainly got;
And his nose is still a good un, tho’ the bridge is
  broke, by his falling on a pewter pint pot;
He’s got the most elegant wide mouth in the
  world, and very large teeth for his age;
And quite as fit as Mrs. Murdockson’s child to
  play Cupid on the Drury Lane Stage. 
And then he has got such dear winning ways—­
  but O, I never never shall see him no more! 
O dear! to think of losing him just after nussing
  him back from death’s door! 
Only the very last month when the windfalls,
  hang ’em, was at twenty a penny! 
And the threepence he’d got by grottoing was
  spent in plums, and sixty for a child is too many. 
And the Cholera man came and whitewash’d us
  all and, drat him, made a seize of our hog,—­
It’s no use to send the Crier to cry him about,
  he’s such a blunderin drunken old dog;
The last time he was fetched to find a lost child,
  he was guzzling with his bell at the Crown,
And went and cried a boy instead of a girl, for a
  distracted Mother and Father about Town. 
Billy—­where are you, Billy, I say? come, Billy,
  come home, to your best of Mothers! 
I’m scared when I think of them Cabroleys, they
  drive so, they’d run over their own Sisters and Brothers. 
Or may be he’s stole by some chimbly sweeping
  wretch, to stick fast in narrow flues and what not,
And be poked up behind with a picked pointed