Short Poems

" WHY does friend Johnson wear that gloomy look?"
" Good cause," you say, " this very morn I took
My wife's corpse to the grave." " Oh dear, oh dear,
Your rich old wife, no more we'll see her here.
And all her money now is yours to spend!
I am indeed distressed, my worthy friend."

My lad, it's a captain's good lady you're meeting,
Though you think if you're caught you'll get off with a beating.
He's a sword and he'll use it. " Not legal" — you say.
Well, are they quite legal, your goings-on, pray?

Those Libyan rogues accuse your wife of greed,
And call her avaricious; yes, indeed!
But such a charge of rankest falsehood savours;
She rather is too generous with her favours.

Your wife is not lacking in prudence or spite,
And that she has shown very plain;
She has bidden an eunuch to watch you at night,
And thinks then you chaste will remain.

" I WON'T marry Betty: she's too fond of men,"
" Well, boys find her charming." " I'll marry her then."

When your duty you never could do to your wife,
Why offer yourself to the surgeon's sharp knife?

The bath-water's fouled when your buttocks you swill.
Just put in your head; 'twill be dirtier still.

As your legs are as curved as the moon's horns when new,
Then your bath should be shaped like a drinking-horn too.

To buy a young minion you've spent all your gold,
And let your three children go hungry and cold,
While you force him on you his male vigour to prove,
Who are long past the age for legitimate love.
May you grow old together, and never another
Embrace you but he, you unnatural mother.

I KNOW Jenny well: she's a right proper lass:
Not a girl in the town can her kisses surpass.