The Works of Thomas Hood; Vol. 01 (of 11): Comic and Serious, in Prose and Verse, With All the Original Illustrations — John Shaqi
The Works of Thomas Hood; Vol. 01 (of 11): Comic and Serious, in Prose and Verse, With All the Original IllustrationsHood, Thomas
General
The Works of Thomas Hood; Vol. 01 (of 11): Comic and Serious, in Prose and Verse, With All the Original Illustrations
Hood, Thomas
English poetry -- 19th century; English wit and humor; Humorous poetry, English
“Oh Lord! oh dear, my heart will break, I shall go stick stark,
staring wild!
Has ever a one seen any thing 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 to 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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