DAGONET DITTIES

WORKS BY GEORGE R. SIMS.

Post 8vo., illustrated boards, 2s. each; cloth limp, 2s. 6d. each.

ROGUES AND VAGABONDS.

THE RING O’ BELLS.

MARY JANE’S MEMOIRS.

MARY JANE MARRIED.

TALES OF TO-DAY.

DRAMAS OF LIFE. With 60 Illustrations.

TINKLETOP’S CRIME. With a Frontispiece by Maurice Greiffenhagen.

Crown 8vo., picture cover, 1s. each; cloth, 1s. 6d. each.

HOW THE POOR LIVE; and HORRIBLE LONDON.

THE DAGONET RECITER AND READER: being Readings and Recitations in Prose and Verse, selected from his own Works by George R. Sims.

THE CASE OF GEORGE CANDLEMAS.

London: CHATTO & WINDUS, 214, Piccadilly, W.

DAGONET DITTIES

[FROM ‘THE REFEREE’]

BY

G E O R G E R. S I M S

AUTHOR OF ‘HOW THE POOR LIVE,’ ‘ROGUES AND VAGABONDS,’ ETC.

SECOND EDITION

London
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1891

C O N T E N T S.

	PAGE
LONDON DAY BY DAY	1
FOR E’ER AND HAIR	3
A DOMESTIC TRAGEDY	7
THE PICK-ME-UP	9
AD COR MEUM	11
ICHABOD	12
A DERBY DITTY	14
SHALL WE REMEMBER?	15
PARADISE AND THE SINNER	16
THE INCOME TAX	19
NONSENSE	20
LE MARDI GRAS	23
TWO SUNDAYS	24
THE MAILS ABOARD	25
AT THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S	27
IN GAY JAPAN	29
THE BALACLAVA HEROES	31
A CHILD’S IDEA	32
SANITATION AT SEA	34
GUIGNOL	35
THE ENGLISH SUMMER	35
A PERFECT PARADISE	36
THAT BREEZE	38
BALLAD OF OLD-TIME FOGS	39
UNDER THE CLOCK	40
THE GIRL OF FORTY-SEVEN	41
CONVENTIONAL MALGRÉ LUI	42
HOME, SWEET HOME	44
IN PORTLAND PLACE	45
THE SHIRT BUTTONS	46
THE LONDONER TO HIS LOVE	48
THE EIFFEL BONNET	49
TO A FAIR MUSICIAN	51
A WORD FOR THE POLICE	52
THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS	53
MY AMBITION	55
A WISH	56
THE SONG OF HEREDITY	57
SCOTCH’D, NOT KILT	58
THE LAST RESOURCE	59
YE BARS AND GATES	60
PORTRAIT OF A PRINCE	61
THE STRONG MEN	63
A BALLAD OF SOAP	65
THE JOKELETEER	67
BILL SIKES’S PROTEST	68
THE CLARINET	69
NO EVENING DRESS	70
ALONE IN LONDON	70
THE VOLUNTEER	71
THOSE BOOTS	73
A SUNDAY SONG	74
UP THE RIGI	75
A PLEA FOR MERCY	77
IF YOU WERE HERE	78
LE BRAV’ GÉNÉRAL	80
THE PARIS EXHIBITION	81
THE NEW LEGEND	82
A MILD DECEMBER	84
THE LAST DUKE	86
TO THE FOG	88
THE REMINISCENCES OF MR. JOHN DOBBS	89
PICKPOCKET POEMS	91
THE CIGARETTE	94
THE EARLY MILK-CART	95
THE COLLABORATORS	98
THE WEN CURE	101
THAT NEW-BORN BABE	103
THE BUTTON	106
A FAÇON DE PARLER	109
JACKSON	110
ANOTHER DANGER	112
AFTER THE ACT	114
THE RIGADOON	117
HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL	121
THE GERMAN GYM	124
TOTTIE	126
THE WELSHMAN IN LONDON	127
THE MAGISTRATE	129
THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE	131
THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN	132
THE PEOPLE’S PALACE	133
A CHARADE	135
A TRUE STORY	137
THE PIRATE ’BUS	138
THE WAR-CRY	141
THE “LANCET”	143
A TALE OF A TUB	148
THE COMIC KING	150

Dagonet Ditties.

London Day by Day.

THE smoke in vaster volumes rolls,
The fever fiend takes larger tolls,
And sin a fiercer grip of souls,
In London day by day.

Still Buggins builds on swampy site,
And Eiffel houses block the light,
And make a town of dreadful night
Of London day by day.

In fashion’s long and busy street,
The outcast foreign harlots meet,
While Robert smiles upon his beat,
In London day by day.

Still modest maidens’ cheeks are stung
With foulest words from wanton’s tongue,
And oaths yelled out with leathern lung,
In London day by day.

Wealth riots in a mad excess,
While thousands, poor and penniless,
Starve in the mighty wilderness,
Of London day by day.

Wrong proudly rears its wicked head,
While Right’s sad eyes with tears are red,
And sluggard Justice lies abed,
In London day by day.

The liar triumphs, and the knave
Rides buoyant on the rolling wave,
And Liberty makes many a slave
In London day by day.

Yet Hope and Trust and Faith and Love,
And God’s fair dowers from above,
Still find a branch, like Noah’s dove,
In London day by day.

And onward still, though slow the pace,
Press pilgrims of our grand old race,
Who seek the Right with firm-set face,
And shed Truth’s light by God’s good grace
O’er London day by day.

For E’er and Hair.

I SAID to my sweet in the morning,
“We must start on our journey at ten”—
She was up in her bedroom adorning,
She’d been there a goodish time then;
And she answered me tenderly, “Poppet,”
As she came to the top of the stair,
“If you see a cab pass you can stop it,
For I’ve only to finish my hair.”

It was ten by the clock of St. Stephen’s
As I sat and looked glum in the hall,
And I offered to wager her evens
She would never be ready at all.
I counted the half and the quarters—
At eleven I ventured to swear;
Then she answered, like one of Eve’s daughters,
“All right, dear—I must do my hair.”

I waited till daylight was waning,
I waited till darkness began,
Upbraiding myself for complaining
Like a selfish and bad-tempered man.
But when midnight rang out from the steeple
I ventured to whisper a prayer,
And she answered, “I hate surly people;
You must let me finish my hair!”

I paid for the cab and dismissed it,
I took off my coat and my hat,
I held her fair hand and I kissed it,
And I curled myself up on the mat.
And when I awoke on the morrow,
I cried, “Oh, where art thou, my fair?”
And she answered, “Oh, run out and borrow
A hairpin or two for my hair.”

The summers have faded to winters,
The winters have melted to springs;
My patience is shivered to splinters,
And still, as she “puts on her things,”
My sweet, though I’m weary of waiting,
And groan in my bitter despair,
Contents herself simply by stating
“She’s just got to finish her hair.”

If she’s here when the world’s at its finish,
And lists to the last crack of doom,
She will watch our poor planet diminish
From the window upstairs in her room.
And when the last trumpet is blowing,
And the angel says, “Hurry up, there!”
She will answer, “All right, sir, I’m going,
But you must let me finish my hair!”

The Artist’s Dilemma.

THE artist was out on the stormy seas,
When his vessel turned upside down,
And his body was blown by the autumn breeze
To the shores of a seaside town.
The fisher-folk spied him miles away,
And, raising a hearty cheer,
They rowed the lifeboat across the bay,
And shouted that help was near.

The artist had sunk for the second time,
He’d a shark on his starboard tack,
But he looked on the boat with a look sublime,
And he told them to take it back.
“My bones may bleach in the mermaid’s cave,
But to art will I e’er be true,
And never a man my life shall save
In a boat of that vulgar blue.”

They found his body at break of day,
It lay on the briny beach,
But he soon got better and stole away
To the house of a local leech.
He took a draught, and he went to bed
In a garret that was to spare;
And when he awoke his host had fled,
For the place had begun to flare.

He was up in a garret against the sky,
And a fire had broken out,
The flames about him were broad and high,
And he heard the people shout.
“Oh, come to the window!” the people cried,
As they bellowed a mighty cheer;
“You’d better come down before you’re fried,
For the fire-escape is here.”

He opened the casement wide, and reeled
Back through the flame and smoke—
For the fire-escape the light revealed—
And then to the crowd he spoke:
“I’ll leap in the jaws of the flames that gape,
For I’d rather be picked up dead
Than save my life in a fire-escape
That is painted a vulgar red.”

They gathered him up with a broom and pan
From the pavement where he fell,
And they sent for the undertaker’s man,
And they toll’d him a passing bell.
They gave him a funeral plain but good,
And out of the local purse
They bought him a coffin of polished wood,
Which they put in a pair-horse hearse.

But the artist-spirit in death was strong,
And it lifted the coffin-lid
While the horses lazily jogged along,
And out of the hearse it slid.
It raised its body and yelled a curse,
And it shouted and cried “Alack!
I’m blest if I ride in a beastly hearse
That is painted a vulgar black.”

A Domestic Tragedy.

SHE was a housemaid, tall and slim,
A well-conducted, modest girl;
Her dress was always neat and trim,
She never sported fringe or curl.
She did her work, and kept her mind
Intent upon her household cares;
One fault alone there was to find—
She left her dustpan on the stairs.

She loved her mistress very much,
She held her master in respect;
Her grief the hardest heart would touch
When they’d occasion to correct;
But still, in spite of all they said—
In spite of scolding and of prayers—
Ah, me! to what at last it led!—
She left her dustpan on the stairs.

One morn while breakfasting below,
And glancing at the Morning Post,
She heard a wild and sudden “Oh!”
That made her drop her buttered toast.
She heard a heavy fall—and groans;
The master, taken unawares,
Had slipped and broken sev’ral bones—
She’d left the dustpan on the stairs.

They sent for doctors by the score,
They fetched in haste Sir Andrew Clark;
But master’s sufferings soon were o’er—
That night he sat in Charon’s barque.
Now in a cell at Colney Hatch
A gibbering housemaid groans and glares,
And tries with trembling hands to snatch
A ghostly dustpan from the stairs.

MORAL.

Ye housemaids who this tale may read,
Remember, backs are hard to mend,
And injured noses freely bleed,
And falls may cause untimely end;
Your masters are but mortal men,
A neck once broken naught repairs.
Oh! think of this, ye housemaids, when
You leave the dustpan on the stairs.

The Pick-me-up.

(WRITTEN AFTER ONE BOTTLE.)

IN the market-place or forum,
If you’re dull, my cockalorum,
Never heed the censor morum,
But just brew yourself a jorum,
In a beaker or a cup,
Of this stimulating liquor,
Which, when life begins to flicker,
And your soul grows slowly sicker,
And you feel a bucket-kicker,
Is a patent pick-me-up.

It was near the Yorkshire Stingo
That in modern London lingo,
With a face like a flamingo,
Said a friend of mine, “By Jingo!
What a wretched wreck you are!”
I replied, “I’m melancholic,
And my pains are diabolic.
I, who once was frisk and frolic,
Now am glum and vitriolic—
Every nerve is on the jar!”

Then a smile that was sardonic
Beamed about his brow Byronic,
And he said, “This is masonic,
But I think you want a tonic—
Try the famous (something) wine.”
And he further said with unction
That I need have no compunction
In obeying his injunction,
’Twould renew each vital function,
And just suit a case like mine.

I have drunk and I’m a giant
Quite refreshed and grown defiant;
All my limbs are free and pliant,
And now neither May nor Bryant
Can supply a match to me.
Now my pen again grows graphic,
And my verse is strictly sapphic,
And my tricycle in traffic
I can ride with smile seraphic,
From all nervous tremors free.

I can laugh at Punch and Judy,
And enjoy a book from Mudie;
I am spick and span and dudey,
And I freely spend my scudi,
And I feel that I could fly.
I’ve a bearing that is regal,
All my acts are strictly legal,
And I’ll wager that an eagle,
Though he’d taken Mother Seigel,
Couldn’t show as clear an eye.

So in market-place or forum,
If you’re dull, my cockalorum,
Never heed the censor morum,
But just brew yourself a jorum,
In a beaker or a cup,
Of this stimulating liquor,
Which, when life begins to flicker,
And your soul grows slowly sicker,
And you feel a bucket-kicker,
Is a patent pick-me-up.

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Dagonet Ditties

DAGONET DITTIES

C O N T E N T S.

Dagonet Ditties.

London Day by Day.

For E’er and Hair.

The Artist’s Dilemma.

A Domestic Tragedy.

MORAL.

The Pick-me-up.

(WRITTEN AFTER ONE BOTTLE.)

Ad Cor Meum.

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Dagonet Ditties

DAGONET DITTIES

C O N T E N T S.

Dagonet Ditties.

London Day by Day.

For E’er and Hair.

The Artist’s Dilemma.

A Domestic Tragedy.

MORAL.

The Pick-me-up. (WRITTEN AFTER ONE BOTTLE.)

Ad Cor Meum.

The Pick-me-up.

(WRITTEN AFTER ONE BOTTLE.)