The Comic Poems of Thomas Hood: A New and Complete EditionHood, Thomas
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The Comic Poems of Thomas Hood: A New and Complete Edition
Hood, Thomas
English poetry -- 19th century; English wit and humor
“Oh Lord! oh dear, my heart will break, I shall go stick stark staring wild!
Has ever a one seen anything about the streets like a crying lost-looking child?
Lawk help me, I don’t know where to look, or to run, if I only knew which way--
A child as is lost about London streets, and especially Seven Dials, is a
needle in a bottle of hay.
I am all in a quiver--get out of my sight, do, you wretch, you little Kitty
M’Nab!
You promised to have half an eye on him, you know you did, you dirty deceitful young drab.
The last time as ever I see him, poor thing, was with my own blessed Motherly eyes,
Sitting as good as gold in the gutter, a playing at making little dirt pies.
I wonder he left the court where he was better off than all the other young boys,
With two bricks, an old shoe, nine oyster-shells, and a dead kitten by way of toys.
When his father comes home, and he always comes home as sure as ever the clock
strikes one,
He’ll be rampant, he will, at his child being lost; and the beef and the inguns
not done!
La bless you, good folks, mind your own consarns, and don’t be making a mob
in the street;
Oh Serjeant M’Farlane! you have not come across my poor little boy, have you.
in your beat?
Do, good people, move on! don’t stand staring at me like a parcel of stupid
stuck pigs;
Saints forbid! but he’s p’r’aps been inviggled away up a court for the sake
of his clothes by the prigs;
He’d a very good jacket, for certain, for I bought it myself for a shilling one
day in Rag Fair;
And his trousers considering not very much patch’d, and red plush, they was
once his Father’s best pair.
His shirt, it’s very lucky I’d got washing in the tub, or that might have gone
with the rest;
But he’d got on a very good pinafore with only two slits and a burn on the breast.
He’d a goodish sort of hat, if the crown was sew’d in, and not quite so much
jagg’d at the brim.
With one shoe on, and the other shoe is a boot, and not a fit, and you’ll know by that
if it’s him.
Except being so well dress’d my mind would misgive, some old beggar woman in want
of an orphan,
Had borrow’d the child to go a begging with, but I’d rather see him laid out in
his coffin!
Do, good people, move on, such a rabble of boys! I’ll break every bone of ’em I
come near,
Go home--you’re spilling the porter--go home--Tommy Jones, go along home with
your beer.
This day is the sorrowfullest day of my life, ever since my name was Betty Morgan,
Them vile Savoyards! they lost him once before all along of following a Monkey
and an Organ.
Oh my Billy--my head will turn right round--if he’s got kiddynapp’d with them
Italians,
They’ll make him a plaster parish image boy, they will, the outlandish
tatterdemalions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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