Page:The Bab Ballads.djvu/43

First and worst in the grim array—
Ghosts of ghosts that have gone their way,
Which I wouldn't revive for a single day
For all the wealth of Plutus—
Are the horrible ghosts that school-days scared:
If the classical ghost that Brutus dared
Was the ghost of his "Cæsar" unprepared,
I'm sure I pity Brutus.

I pass to critical seventeen;
The ghost of that terrible wedding scene,
When an elderly colonel stole my queen,
And woke my dream of heaven.
No school-girl decked in her nurse-room curls
Was my gushing innocent queen of pearls;
If she wasn't a girl of a thousand girls,
She was one of forty-seven!

I see the ghost of my first cigar—
Of the thence-arising family jar—
Of my maiden brief (I was at the bar),
(I called the judge, "Your wushup!")
Of reckless days and reckless nights,
With wrenched-off knockers, extinguished lights,
Unholy songs, and tipsy fights,
Which I strove in vain to hush up.

Ghosts of fraudulent joint-stock banks,
Ghosts of "copy, declined with thanks,"
Of novels returned in endless ranks,
And thousands more, I suffer.