The Bab Ballads. William Schwenck Gilbert

      Come with me, little maid,

      Nay, shrink not, thus afraid—

      I’ll harm thee not!

      Fly not, my love, from me—

      I have a home for thee—

      A fairy grot,

      Where mortal eye

      Can rarely pry,

      There shall thy dwelling be!

      List to me, while I tell

      The pleasures of that cell,

      Oh, little maid!

      What though its couch be rude,

      Homely the only food

      Within its shade?

      No thought of care

      Can enter there,

      No vulgar swain intrude!

      Come with me, little maid,

      Come to the rocky shade

      I love to sing;

      Live with us, maiden rare—

      Come, for we “want” thee there,

      Thou elfin thing,

      To work thy spell,

      In some cool cell

      In stately Pentonville!

      JOHN courted lovely MARY ANN,

      So likewise did his brother, FREDDY.

      FRED was a very soft young man,

      While JOHN, though quick, was most unsteady.

      FRED was a graceful kind of youth,

      But JOHN was very much the strongest.

      “Oh, dance away,” said she, “in truth,

      I’ll marry him who dances longest.”

      JOHN tries the maiden’s taste to strike

      With gay, grotesque, outrageous dresses,

      And dances comically, like

      CLODOCHE AND Co., at the Princess’s.

      But FREDDY tries another style,

      He knows some graceful steps and does ’em—

      A breathing Poem—Woman’s smile—

      A man all poesy and buzzem.

      Now FREDDY’S operatic pas—

      Now JOHNNY’S hornpipe seems entrapping:

      Now FREDDY’S graceful entrechats—

      Now JOHNNY’S skilful “cellar-flapping.”

      For many hours—for many days—

      For many weeks performed each brother,

      For each was active in his ways,

      And neither would give in to t’other.

      After a month of this, they say

      (The maid was getting bored and moody)

      A wandering curate passed that way

      And talked a lot of goody-goody.

      “Oh my,” said he, with solemn frown,

      “I tremble for each dancing frater,

      Like unregenerated clown

      And harlequin at some the-ayter.”

      He showed that men, in dancing, do

      Both impiously and absurdly,

      And proved his proposition true,

      With Firstly, Secondly, and Thirdly.

      For months both JOHN and FREDDY danced,

      The curate’s protests little heeding;

      For months the curate’s words enhanced

      The sinfulness of their proceeding.

      At length they bowed to Nature’s rule—

      Their steps grew feeble and unsteady,

      Till FREDDY fainted on a stool,

      And JOHNNY on the top of FREDDY.

      “Decide!” quoth they, “let him be named,

      Who henceforth as his wife may rank you.”

      “I’ve changed my views,” the maiden said,

      “I only marry curates, thank you!”

      Says FREDDY, “Here is goings on!

      To bust myself with rage I’m ready.”

      “I’ll be a curate!” whispers JOHN—

      “And I,” exclaimed poetic FREDDY.

      But while they read for it, these chaps,

      The curate booked the maiden bonny—

      And when she’s buried him, perhaps,

      She’ll marry FREDERICK or JOHNNY.

      Sir GUY was a doughty crusader,

      A muscular knight,

      Ever ready to fight,

      A very determined invader,

      And DICKEY DE LION’S delight.

      LENORE was a Saracen maiden,

      Brunette, statuesque,

      The reverse of grotesque,

      Her pa was a bagman from Aden,

      Her mother she played in burlesque.

      A coryphée, pretty and loyal,

      In amber and red

      The ballet she led;

      Her mother performed at the Royal,

      LENORE at the Saracen’s Head.

      Of face