When I was a lad there were hansoms in London,
With drivers on top of a little back stair
And horses that ran under silver-tipt harness
Or stood by the curb-stone awaiting a fare,
And tossed in the air
Their nose-bags of corn for the sparrows to share.

And sometimes in Spring when the nose-bags were leaking,
And sparrows were loud amid loot of spilt corn,
Old Cabby reached over the slender Park railings
And stole a rosette of the double red thorn
His mare to adorn,
With " Fares may be few, but we won't be forlorn. "

The spokes they were pointed with red and with yellow;
The brass was like gold where the reins threaded through;
There was sometimes a crest on the old leather blinkers,
A crown on the horse-cloth of crimson and blue
That said " It's for you
We're waiting, my Lord, and a crown is our due. "

Now where are they gone to, the weather-worn cabbies
That drove us alertly through all the dense shoals
That filled the strait Fleet from St. Paul's to St. Martin's,
Or over the bridge where big Benjamin tolls?
O! somewhere their souls
Still murmur " Where to, Sir? " through tiny peep-holes.

Elysian fields show them pasturing fillies
Sure-footed and shapely — just built for a yoke;
They comb their silk manes and they wheedle and drive them
Down roads without mud where the fogs never choke,
And rain's a rare joke
To cheerful night-watchmen with cressets of coke.

The fares that they find there are born in the purple;
Their talk is of Dizzy and Toole and Bend Or;
Their manners are suave and their tips are all golden;
They dwell between Mayfair and Kensington Gore;
And flunkeys galore
Poll-powdered, receive them at Paradise door.