50
disbelieve it, if you please),
On a joint of meat, a pudding, and a little bit of cheese.
In time came those maternal joys
Which take the form of girls or boys,
And strange to say of each they'd one--
A tiddy-iddy daughter, and a tiddy-iddy son!
Oh, list to this incredible tale
Of THOMSON GREEN and HARRIET HALE,
Its truth in one remark you'll sum--
"Twaddle twaddle twaddle twaddle twaddle twaddle twum!"
My name for truth is gone, I fear,
But, monstrous as it may appear,
They let their drawing-room one day
To an eligible person in the cotton-broking way.
Whenever THOMSON GREEN fell sick
His wife called in a doctor, quick,
From whom some words like these would come--
Fiat mist. sumendum haustus, in a cochleyareum.
For thirty years this curious pair
Hung out in Canonbury Square,
And somehow, wonderful to say,
They loved each other dearly in a quiet sort of way.
Well, THOMSON GREEN fell ill and died;
For just a year his widow cried,
And then her heart she gave away
To the eligible lodger in the cotton-broking way.
Oh, list to this incredible tale
Of THOMSON GREEN and HARRIET HALE,
Its truth in one remark you'll sum--
"Twaddle twaddle twaddle twaddle twaddle twaddle twum!"
Bob Polter
BOB POLTER was a navvy, and
His hands were coarse, and dirty too,
His homely face was rough and tanned,
His time of life was thirty-two.
He lived among a working clan
(A wife he hadn't got at all),
A decent, steady, sober man--
No saint, however--not at all.
He smoked, but in a modest way,
Because he thought he needed it;
He drank a pot of beer a day,
And sometimes he exceeded it.
At times he'd pass with other men
A loud convivial night or two,
With, very likely, now and then,
On Saturdays, a fight or two.
But still he was a sober soul,
A labour-never-shirking man,
Who paid his way--upon the whole
A dece