Classic Poem

A PATHETIC BALLAD .

'T WAS twelve o'clock, not twelve at night,
But twelve o'clock at noon;
Because the sun was shining bright
And not the silver moon.
A proper time for friends to call,
Or Pots, or Penny Post;
When, lo! as Phaebe sat at work,
She saw her Pompey's Ghost!
Now, when a female has a call
From people that are dead;
Like Paris ladies, she receives
Her visitors in bed.
But Pompey's spirit would not come
Like spirits that are white,
Because he was a Blackamoor,
And would n't show at night!
But of all unexpected things
That happen to us here,
The most unpleasant is a rise
In what is very dear.
So Phaebe screamed an awful scream
To prove the seaman's text;
That after black appearances,
White squalls will follow next.
" Oh, Phaebe, dear! oh, Phaebe, dear!
Don't go to scream or faint;
You think because I'm black I am
The Devil, but I ain't!
Behind the heels of Lady Lambe
I walked while I had breath;
But that is past, and I am now
A-walking after Death!
" No murder, though, I come to tell,
By base and bloody crime;
So Phaebe, dear, put off your fits
To some more fitting time.
No Coroner, like a boatswain's mate,
My body need attack,
With his round dozen to find out
Why I have died so black.
" One Sunday, shortly after tea,
My skin began to burn
As if I had in my inside
A heater, like the urn.
Delirious in the night I grew,
And as I lay in bed,
They say I gathered all the wool
You see upon my head.

" His Lordship for his doctor sent,
My treatment to begin; —
I wish that he had called him out,
Before he called him in!
For though to physic he was bred,
And passed at Surgeon's Hall,
To make his post a sinecure
He never cured at all!

" The doctor looked about my breast,
And then about my back,
And then he shook his head and said
" Your case looks very black."
And first he sent me hot cayenne
And then gamboge to swallow,
But still my fever would not turn
To Scarlet or to Yellow!

" With madder and with turmeric,
He made his next attack;
But neither he nor all his drugs
Could stop my dying black.
At last I got so sick of life,
And sick of being dosed,
One Monday morning I gave up
My physic and the ghost!

" Oh, Phaebe, dear, what pain it was
To sever every tie!
You know black beetles feel as much
As giants when they die.
And if there is a bridal bed,
Or bride of little worth,
It's lying in a bed of mould,
Along with Mother Earth.

" Alas; some happy, happy day,
In church I hoped to stand,
And like a muff of sable skin
Receive your lily hand.
But sternly with that piebald match,
My fate untimely clashes,
For now, like Pompe-double-i,
I'm sleeping in my ashes!

" And now farewell! a last farewell!
I'm wanted down below,
And have but time enough to add
One word before I go —
In mourning crape and bombazine
Ne'er spend your precious pelf —
Don't go in black for me — for I
Can do it for myself.

" Henceforth within my grave I rest,
But Death who there inherits,
Allowed my spirit leave to come,
You seemed so out of spirits:
But do not sigh, and do not cry,
By grief too much engrossed,
Nor for a ghost of color, turn
The color of a ghost!

" Again, farewell, my Phaebe, dear!
Once more a last adieu!
For I must make myself as scarce
As swans of sable hue. "
From black to gray, from gray to nought,
The shape began to fade —
And, like an egg, though not so white,
The Ghost was newly laid!