Blackberries :: :: University of Virginia Library

Blackberries

by William Allingham

Allingham, William (1824-1889)

[epigraph]

[dedication]

[section]

[Here must I stay awhile, against my will]

[“Nation of Shopkeepers”—how base a name!]

[A whore that's gentle, mild, and sweet]

[Soldiers have fame, and harlots infamy]

[Hireling Soldier, Priest, and Woman]

[Many things flash across the town-bred mind]

[The Workers' Revolution must begin]

[Old folk, tho' weak, will serve you best: of late]

[Is idleness indeed so black a crime?]

[O the buzz and clack and clatter]

[The Century gallops, glorying itself]

[In the Great City, as 'twere Hell]

[One Cockney you despise; four million such]

[A bat-wing'd Cupid takes his flight]

[Stir and change from morn till night]

[section]

Collapse All | Expand All expand section

[A bat-wing'd Cupid takes his flight]

A bat-wing'd Cupid takes his flight
Through the city streets by night;
Dread him, shun him, Boys and Girls!
He has horns among his curls,
He has venom on his arrow,
Rotting skin and bone and marrow.

The Hogarthian or rather Goyan drawing attached to this cannot at present be reproduced; it might do much good.