“Yet if my face you still retrace
    I almost have a doubt—­
I’m like an old Forget-Me-Not
    With all the leaves torn out!

“To think that on that finger-joint
    Another pledge should cling;
O Bess! upon my very soul
    It struck like ‘Knock and Ring.’

“A ton of marble on my breast
    Can’t hinder my return;
Your conduct, ma’am, has set my blood
    A-boiling in its urn!

“Remember, oh, remember how
    The marriage rite did run,—­
If ever we one flesh should be
    ’Tis now—­when I have none!

“And you, Sir—­once a bosom friend—­
    Of perjured faith convict,
As ghostly toe can give no blow,
    Consider yourself kicked.

“A hollow voice is all I have,
    But this I tell you plain,
Marry come up! you marry, ma’am,
    And I’ll come up again.”

More he had said, but chanticleer
    The spritely shade did shock
With sudden crow—­and off he went
    Like fowling piece at cock!

MARY’S GHOST:  THOMAS HOOD

A Pathetic Ballad

’Twas in the middle of the night,
    To sleep young William tried,
When Mary’s ghost came stealing in,
    And stood at his bedside.

“O William dear!  O William dear! 
    My rest eternal ceases;
Alas! my everlasting peace
    Is broken into pieces.

“I thought the last of all my cares
    Would end with my last minute;
But though I went to my long home
    I didn’t stay long in it.

“The body-snatchers they have come
    And made a snatch at me;
It’s very hard them kind of men
    Won’t let a body be!

“You thought that I was buried deep,
    Quite decent-like and chary,
But from her grave, in Mary-Bone,
    They’ve come and boned your Mary.

“The arm that used to take your arm
    Is took to Doctor Vyse;
And both my legs are gone to walk
    The hospital at Guy’s.

“I vowed that you should have my hand,
    But Fate gives us denial;
You’ll find it there, at Doctor Bell’s,
    In spirits and a phial.

“As for my feet, the little feet
    You used to find so pretty,
There’s one, I know, in Bedford Row,
    The T’other’s in the City.

“I can’t tell where my head is gone,
    But Doctor Carpue can;
As for my trunk, it’s all packed up
    To go by Pickford’s van.

“I wish you’d go to Mr. P.,
    And save me such a ride;
I don’t half like the outside place
    They’ve took for my inside.

“The cock it crows—­I must be gone! 
    My William, we must part! 
But I’ll be yours in death, altho’
    Sir Astley has my heart.

“Don’t go to weep upon my grave,
    And think that there I be;
They haven’t left an atom there
    Of my anatomie.”