The Bab Ballads With which are included Songs of a Savoyard: By W. S. Gilbert: With 350 illustrations by the author |
 |
HAUNTED |
 | The Bab Ballads |  |
39
HAUNTED
Haunted? Ay, in a social way,
By a body of ghosts in a dread array:
But no conventional spectres they—
Appalling, grim, and tricky:
I quail at mine as I'd never quail
At a fine traditional spectre pale,
With a turnip head and a ghostly wail,
And a splash of blood on the dicky!
By a body of ghosts in a dread array:
But no conventional spectres they—
Appalling, grim, and tricky:
I quail at mine as I'd never quail
At a fine traditional spectre pale,
With a turnip head and a ghostly wail,
And a splash of blood on the dicky!
Mine are horrible social ghosts,
Speeches and women and guests and hosts,
Weddings and morning calls and toasts,
In every bad variety:
Ghosts that hover about the grave
Of all that's manly, free, and brave:
You'll find their names on the architrave
Of that charnel-house, Society.
Speeches and women and guests and hosts,
Weddings and morning calls and toasts,
In every bad variety:
Ghosts that hover about the grave
Of all that's manly, free, and brave:
You'll find their names on the architrave
Of that charnel-house, Society.
40
Black Monday—black as its schoolroom ink—
With its dismal boys that snivel and think
Of nauseous messes to eat and drink,
And a frozen tank to wash in.
That was the first that brought me grief
And made me weep, till I sought relief
In an emblematical handkerchief,
To choke such baby bosh in.
With its dismal boys that snivel and think
Of nauseous messes to eat and drink,
And a frozen tank to wash in.
That was the first that brought me grief
And made me weep, till I sought relief
In an emblematical handkerchief,
To choke such baby bosh in.
First and worst in the grim array—
Ghosts of ghosts that have gone their way,
Which I wouldn't revive for a single day
For all the wealth of Plutus—
Are the horrible ghosts that schooldays scared:
If the classical ghost that Brutus dared
Was the ghost of his “Cæsar” unprepared,
I'm sure I pity Brutus.
Ghosts of ghosts that have gone their way,
Which I wouldn't revive for a single day
For all the wealth of Plutus—
Are the horrible ghosts that schooldays scared:
If the classical ghost that Brutus dared
Was the ghost of his “Cæsar” unprepared,
I'm sure I pity Brutus.
I pass to critical seventeen:
The ghost of that terrible wedding scene,
When an elderly colonel stole my queen,
And woke my dream of heaven:
No school-girl decked in her nursery curls
Was my gushing innocent queen of pearls;
If she wasn't a girl of a thousand girls,
She was one of forty-seven!
The ghost of that terrible wedding scene,
When an elderly colonel stole my queen,
And woke my dream of heaven:
No school-girl decked in her nursery curls
Was my gushing innocent queen of pearls;
If she wasn't a girl of a thousand girls,
She was one of forty-seven!
I see the ghost of my first cigar—
Of the thence-arising family jar—
Of my maiden brief (I was at the bar),
When I called the judge “Your wushup”!
Of reckless days and reckless nights,
With wrenched-off knockers, extinguished lights,
Unholy songs, and tipsy fights,
Which I strove in vain to hush up.
Of the thence-arising family jar—
Of my maiden brief (I was at the bar),
When I called the judge “Your wushup”!
Of reckless days and reckless nights,
With wrenched-off knockers, extinguished lights,
Unholy songs, and tipsy fights,
Which I strove in vain to hush up.
41
Ghosts of fraudulent joint-stock banks,
Ghosts of “copy, declined with thanks,”
Of novels returned in endless ranks,
And thousands more, I suffer.
The only line to fitly grace
My humble tomb, when I've run my race,
Is, “Reader, this is the resting-place
Of an unsuccessful duffer.”
Ghosts of “copy, declined with thanks,”
Of novels returned in endless ranks,
And thousands more, I suffer.
The only line to fitly grace
My humble tomb, when I've run my race,
Is, “Reader, this is the resting-place
Of an unsuccessful duffer.”
I've fought them all, these ghosts of mine,
But the weapons I've used are sighs and brine,
And now that I'm nearly forty-nine,
Old age is my only bogy;
For my hair is thinning away at the crown,
And the silver fights with the worn-out brown;
And a general verdict sets me down
As an irreclaimable fogy.
But the weapons I've used are sighs and brine,
And now that I'm nearly forty-nine,
Old age is my only bogy;
For my hair is thinning away at the crown,
And the silver fights with the worn-out brown;
And a general verdict sets me down
As an irreclaimable fogy.
| The Bab Ballads | |