Classic Poem

I.

The pig at eve was lank and faint
Where Patrick is the patron saint,
And with his peasant lord, unfed,
Went grunting to their common bed;
But when black night her sables threw
Athwart the slough of Ballyloo,
The deep-mouthed thunder's angry roar
Rebellowed on the Ulster shore,
And hailstones pelted, mighty big,
The towers of Castle Blarneygig.

II.

Aloft, where erst tyrannic Fear
Placed lynx-eyed Vigilance to peer,
And listen in the dunnest dark
Whether a feudal cur should bark,
Drunk, deaf, and purblind, in the din
Dozed the old warder Rory Flinn.
Before the antique hall's turf fire
Was stretched the porter, Con Macguire,
Who at stout usquebaugh's command,
Snored with his proker in his hand.
Kathlane, who very ill could dish
Wild Ballyshannon's springy fish,
And Sheelah who had lately come
To spider-brush from Blunderdrum,
Were dreaming in a stolen embrace
With Roger Moyle and Redmond Scrace;
And all the vassals' senses lay
Drowned in the whisky of the day.
Still raged the storm; still, records run,
All slept in Blarneygig save one,
Lord of the castle and domain,
Sir Tooleywhagg O'Shaughnashane.

III.

He heard, or thought he heard, a sound
Pierce through the hurly-burly round;
A shriek, a yell, he knew not what,
So from his night-couch up he got.
Then through a peep-hole popped his head,
And thus Sir Tooleywhagg he said;
Standing the while, though something loth,
In a short shirt of Irish cloth.

IV.

" Spake out, " he cried, " whose voice is that,
Shrill as a Tom Balruddery cat?
Come you a fairy, good or ill,
My bullocks to presarve or kill?
Or only does a Banshee prowl
For somebody's departing sowl?
Haply you lurk from foemen nigh,
My sea-side castle's strength to spy,
Who on the morrow may think fit
To bother Blarneygig a bit;
Och! if the latter, soon as light
Peeps over Murroughlaughlin's height,
My kernes and gallowglasses here
Will show you sport with sparthe and spear;
And sallying on my spalpeen foe,
Shout Forroch! Forroch! Bugg-abo! "

V.

Scarce had he said, when lightning played
Full on the features of a maid,
Who in the elemental shock,
Stuck like a limpet to the rock,
Reared o'er the surface of the flood
Her pallid cheek, her lip's life-blood,
The blended colours seemed to show
Of pearl and coral from below.
Save that her dank dishevelled hair
Half hid her breast, her breast was bare;
What could be seen looked firm and white
As the rude rock she held so tight;
Bare too was all her beauteous form,
Stript by the unrelenting storm!
But half in sea and half on shore
A liquid petticoat she wore;
And as the undulating surge
Did to and fro its fury urge,
Just now and then it left the tips
Exposed of two round polished hips;
All downward else her blush to save
Lay covered by the wanton wave.
But oh! her voice from out the main
Seemed sweeter than a syren's strain;
And while below the cliff she clung,
Thus to Sir Tooleywhagg she sung: