O there's nothing like the feeling that passes through the mind When you know a lovely lady is pulling up her blind, And my heart was all a-flutter, in that lonely street of Birr, When I heard the curtains rustle, with the sylphid hand of her. I saw the window open, I saw a face to scarce! I heard a voice that muttered "What are ye doin' there?" And over me was emptied a full and flowing can! Which made me hurry homewards, a wet and wiser man! I sang my song that midnight, with voice of dulcet tone, My dulcet voice next morning was like a bagpipe groan, A blanket round my shoulders, my feet were in a pan, Some doctor's stuff beside me, a sad and wiser man! [Illustration] CANTICRANK. IF you have æsthetic notions of the classic beauty rare, You would never for a moment say that Nature took the prize, For the elegance of figure, or tint upon her hair, Of Mother Becca Canticrank, you wouldn't like her eyes; Her nose you couldn't admirate, Her teeth are in a chippy state, Her voice is like a corncrake, her manner like a knife; A cutting way of dealing With sentimental feeling, You wouldn't altogether care to choose her for a wife. But ah! she is the casket of a compensating excellence, The odour of a sanctity peculiarly her own, She knows she is, without a doubt, Intensely moral out and out, And so she sits in judgment on a self-constructed throne. As Censor of corruptousness, Of Nature in voluptousness, She rails in holy horror, with a Puritanic rage, That beauty's form is shocking, In semi-raiment mocking, Her own upholstered scragginess in picture or on stage. Her loathing is the ballet; For lo! from court and alley, The thousand Cinderellas are fairy clad and bright, A direr deed of sinning-- By dint of beauty winning Their bread, than by the needle, in the murky candlelight, O Mother Becca Canticrank, The ways of earth are very rank; But women live by beauty, intelligence, and toil. And toil is overcrowded, Mam, Intelligence is got by cram; And what's for lovely Sally of the garret, shall she spoil? No! pray for her, and set her, As toiler for the sweater, Or freeze her in the winter, on your doorstep in the street, With penance to her bones, By whiting up the stones, That you may moil her handiwork with smirch of dirty feet. Or pray for her, and crape her, As vestal to the draper, To do the woful penance, of Canticranks to please; Till worn out and weary, Unto her bedroom eyrie,