Classic Poem

High on a rough and dismal crag,
Where Kean might spout, “Ay, there's the rub,”
Where oft, no doubt, some midnight hag
Had danced a jig with Beelzebub,
There stood beneath the pale moonlight
A miner grim with visage long,
Who vexed the drowsy ear of night
With dreadful rhyme and dismal song.

He sang: “I have no harp or lute
To sound the stern decrees of fate;
I once possessed a two-holed flute,
But that I sold to raise a stake.
Then wake thy strains, my wild tin-pan,
Affright the crickets from their lairs,
Make wood and mountain ring again,
And terrify the grizzly bears.

“My heart is on a distant shore,
My gentle love is far away,
She dreams not that my clothes are tore!
And all besmeared with dirty clay;
She little knows how much of late,
Amid these dark and dismal scenes,
I've struggled with an adverse fate,
And lived, ah me! on pork and beans.

“Oh! that a bean would never grow,
To fling its shadow o'er my heart;
My tears of grief are hard to flow,
But food like this must make them start,
The good old times have passed away,
And all things now are strange and new;
All save my shirts and trousers gray,
Three stockings and one cowhide shoe!

“Oh, give me back the days of yore,
And all those bright though fading scenes
Connected with that happy shore
Where turkeys grew, and calms and greens—
Those days that sank long weeks ago
Deep in the solemn grave of time,
And left no trace that man may know
Save trousers all patched up behind!
And boots all worn, and shoes all torn,
Or botched with most outrageous stitches.
Oh, give me back those days of yore,
And take these weather beaten breeches!”