Oh, Salisbury Plain is bleak and bare,-- At least so I've heard many people declare, For I fairly confess I never was there;-- Not a shrub nor a tree, Nor a bush can you see; No hedges, no ditches, no gates, no stiles, Much less a house, or a cottage for miles;-- --It's a very sad thing to be caught in the rain When night's coming on upon Salisbury Plain. Now, I'd have you to know That, a great while ago, The best part of a century, may be, or so, Across this same plain, so dull and so dreary, A couple of Travellers, wayworn and weary, Were making their way; Their profession, you'd say, At a single glance did not admit of a query; The pump-handled pig-tail, and whiskers, worn then, With scarce an exception by seafaring men, The jacket,--the loose trousers "bows'd up together"--all Guiltless of braces, as those of Charles Wetherall,-- The pigeon-toed step, and the rollicking motion, Bespoke them two genuine sons of the Ocean, And shew'd in a moment their real char_á_cters, (The accent's so placed on this word by our Jack Tars.) The one in advance was sturdy and strong, With arms uncommonly bony and long, And his Guernsey shirt Was all pitch and dirt, Which sailors don't think inconvenient or wrong. He was very broad-breasted, And very deep-chested; His sinewy frame correspond with the rest did, Except as to height, for he could not be more At the most, you would say, than some five feet four, And if measured, perhaps had been found a thought lower. Dame Nature, in fact,--whom some person or other, --A Poet,--has call'd a "capricious step-mother,"-- You saw, when beside him, Had somehow denied him In longitude what she had granted in latitude, A trifling defect You'd the sooner detect From his having contracted a stoop in his attitude. Square-built and broad-shoulder'd, good-humoured and gay, With his collar and countenance open as day, The latter--'twas mark'd with small-pox, by the way,-- Had a sort of expression good will to bespeak; He'd a smile in his eye, and a quid in his cheek! And, in short, notwithstanding his failure in height, He was just such a man as you'd say, at first sight, You would much rather dine, or shake hands, with than fight!