At morn, the noise of boys aloof, To Poplar bound, too much by half Did prove; but most he loathed the hour When Mr. Jardine chose to say Five shillings he would have to pay, Then said he, "This is very dreary;" THE BOW STREET GRANGE. By Alfred Tennyson. With blackest mud, the locked-up sots Were splashed and covered, one and all. And rusty nails, and callous knots, Stuck from the bench against the wall. The wooden bed felt hard and strange; Lost was the key that oped the latch; To light his pipe he had no match, Within the Bow Street station's range. He only said, "It's very dreary;" The rain fell like a sluice that even ; His Clarence boots could not be dried, But had been soaked since half-past sevenTo get them off in vain he tried. After the smashing of his hat, Upon the middle of the night, Waking, he heard a stunning row; Some jolly cocks sang out till light, And would not keep still anyhow. He only said, "The cell is dreary ;" All night within that gloomy cell The keys within the padlock creaked; The tipsy 'gents' bawled out as well, And in the dungeons yelled and shrieked. Policemen slyly prowled about; Their faces glimmered through the door, But brought not, though he did implore, One humble glass of cold without. He only said, "The night is dreary;" "Bail cometh not," he said; He said, "I have been very beery, In 1855, Messrs. G. Routledge & Co., published a small volume, by Frank E. Smedley and Edmund Hodgson Yates, entitled Mirth ant Metre, which contained several excellent parodies, one entitled Boreäna, after the The Ballad of Oriana; and another, called Vauxhall, which imitated Locksley Hall. Most of the parodies in the book were written by Mr. Edmund H. Yates, but he gave the credit of Boreäna to Mr. Frank Smedley, the author of several well-known novels, who died in May, 1864. While the dancers gaily hopped, And the brass-band never stopped, Boreäna, I to thee the question popped, |