Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 04
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Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 04
Literature -- Collections
What words can express
The dismay and distress
Of Sir Guy, when he found what a terrible mess
His cursing and banning had now got him into?
That words, which to use are a shame and a sin too,
Had thus on their speaker recoiled, and his malison
Placed in the hands of the Devil's own "pal" his son!--
He sobbed and he sighed,
And he screamed, and he cried,
And behaved like a man that is mad or in liquor--he
Tore his peaked beard, and he dashed off his "Vicary,"
Stamped on the jasey
As though he were crazy,
And staggering about just as if he were "hazy,"
Exclaimed, "Fifty pounds!" (a large sum in those times)
"To the person, whoever he may be, that climbs
To that window above there, _en ogive_, and painted,
And brings down my curly-wi'--" Here Sir Guy fainted!
With many a moan,
And many a groan,
What with tweaks of the nose, and some _eau de Cologne_,
He revived,--Reason once more remounted her throne,
Or rather the instinct of Nature--'twere treason
To her, in the Scroope's case, perhaps, to say Reason--
But what saw he then--Oh! my goodness! a sight
Enough to have banished his reason outright!--
In that broad banquet-hall
The fiends one and all
Regardless of shriek, and of squeak, and of squall,
From one to another were tossing that small
Pretty, curly-wigged boy, as if playing at ball;
Yet none of his friends or his vassals might dare
To fly to the rescue or rush up the stair,
And bring down in safety his curly-wigged Heir!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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