I.
The way was long, the wind was cold,
The minstrel was infirm and old.
Of two bioncs I robbed the bard,
For which I got three months with hard.
II.
She wore a wreath of roses
The night that first we met,
I went to call her carriage—
Ne’er that night can I forget.
I held the door a moment,
And, as she stepped inside,
I sneaked her lovely bracelet,
And round the corner guyed.
The next time that I met her
’Twas in the busy Strand;
She wore a hat and feathers,
And her purse was in her hand.
I saw it in a moment,
And methinks I see her now
As I snatched her purse and hooked it
Ere she’d time to make a row.
Yet once again I saw her—
It was in the witness-box—
A fashionable bonnet
Adorned her golden locks.
She looked at me a moment,
Then said what she’d to say;
And that is why they sent me
To gloomy Holloway.
III.
It was night in the month of October,
And the stars were alight in the sky,
When a gent as I thought wasn’t sober
The corner I stood at passed by.
I saw that his chain was a gold one;
I guessed that his watch was the same;
And so, as the gent was an old one,
I thought him legitimate game.
I’d got his gold chain in my fingers,
And was going to give it a tug,
When whack came a couple of stingers—
Two beauties—and right on my lug.
Then I’d one that struck stars from my peeper
And another that shifted my jaw—
A regular send-you-to-sleeper—
And that is the last that I saw.
The last that I saw till a peeler,
To fill sorrow’s cup to the brim,
Put my carcase inside a four-wheeler,
And said, “What a flat to try him!”
“Who is he?” I groaned, as in torture
I nervously felt for my face;
And he said, “Well, you tackled a scorcher;
That elderly gent was Jem Mace.”