Tell me, knife-grinder, how came you to grind knives? Did some rich man tyrannically use you? Was it the squire? or parson of the parish? Or the attorney?
Was it the squire for killing of his game? or Covetous parson for his tithes distraining? Or roguish lawyer made you lose your little All in a lawsuit?
(Have you not read the Rights of Man, by Tom Paine?) Drops of compassion tremble on my eyelids, Ready to fall as soon as you have told your Pitiful story.
Story! God bless you! I have none to tell, sir; Only, last night, a-drinking at the Chequers, This poor old hat and breeches, as you see, were Torn in a scuffle.
Constables came up for to take me into Custody; they took me before the justice; Justice Oldmixon put me into the parish Stocks for a vagrant.
I should be glad to drink your honor's health in A pot of beer, if you will give me sixpence; But for my part, I never love to meddle With politics, sir.
I give thee sixpence! I will see thee damned first,-- Wretch! whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance,-- Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded, Spiritless outcast!
(_Kicks the knife-grinder, overturns his wheel, and exit in a transport of republican enthusiasm and universal philanthropy._)
[8] A burlesque upon the humanitarian sentiments of Southey in his younger days, as well as of the Sapphic stanzas in which he sometimes embodied them.
'T is a dozen or so of years ago, Somewhere in the West countree, That a nice girl lived, as ye Hoosiers know By the name of Deborah Lee; Her sister was loved by Edgar Poe, But Deborah by me.
Now I was green, and she was green, As a summer's squash might be; And we loved as warmly as other folks,-- I and my Deborah Lee,-- With a love that the lasses of Hoosierdom Coveted her and me.
But somehow it happened a long time ago, In the aguish West countree, That chill March morning gave the _shakes_ To my beautiful Deborah Lee; And the grim steam-doctor (drat him!) came, And bore her away from me,-- The doctor and death, old partners they,-- In the aguish West countree.
The angels wanted her in heaven (But they never asked for me), And that is the reason, I rather guess, In the aguish West countree, That the cold March wind, and the doctor, and death, Took off my Deborah Lee-- My beautiful Deborah Lee-- From the warm sunshine and the opening flowers, And bore her away from me.