Hairy-faced Dick hath a swarthy hue,
Between a gingerbread nut and a Jew,
And his pigtail is long, and bushy, and thick,
Like a pump-handle stuck on the end of a stick.
Hairy-faced Dick understands his trade;
He stands by the breech of a long carronade,
The linstock glows in his bony hand,
Waiting that grim old skipper's command.
"The bullets are flying--huzza! huzza!
The bullets are flying--away! away!"
The brawny boarders mount by the chains,
And are over their buckles in blood and brains:
On the fman's deck, where a man should be,
Young Hamilton Tighe
Waves his cutlass high,
And _Capitaine Crapaud_ bends low at his knee.
Hairy-faced Dick, linstock in hand,
Is waiting that grim-looking skipper's command:--
A wink comes sly
From that sinister eye--
Hairy-faced Dick at once lets fly,
And knocks off the head of young Hamilton Tighe!
* * * * *
There's a lady sits lonely in bower and hall,
Her pages and handmaidens come at her call:
"Now haste ye, my handmaidens, haste and see
How he sits there and glow'rs with his head on his knee!"
The maidens smile, and, her thought to destroy,
They bring her a little pale mealy-faced boy;
And the mealy-faced boy says, "Mother dear,
Now Hamilton's dead, I've a thousand a-year!"
The lady has donn'd her mantle and hood,
She is bound for shrift at St. Mary's Rood:--
"Oh! the taper shall burn, and the bell shall toll,
And the mass shall be said for my step-son's soul,
And the tablet fair shall be hung up on high,
_Orate pro anima Hamilton Tighe!_"
Her coach and four
Draws up to the door,
With her groom, and her footman, and half a score more;
The lady steps into her coach alone,
And they hear her sigh and they hear her groan;
They close the door, and they turn the pin,
_But there's one rides with her who never stept in_!
All the way there, and all the way back,
The harness strains, and the coach-springs crack,
The horses snort, and plunge, and kick,
Till the coachman thinks he is driving Old Nick:
And the grooms and the footmen wonder and say,
"What makes the old coach so heavy to-day?"
But the mealy-faced boy peeps in, and sees
A man sitting there with his head on his knees.
'Tis ever the same, in hall or in bower,
Wherever the place, whatever the hour,
That lady mutters and talks to the air,
And her eye is fixed on an empty chair;
But the mealy-faced boy still whispers with dread,
"She talks to a man with never a head!"
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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