en removed his pegs,
And as his legs were off,--of course,
He soon was off his legs!

And there he hung till he was dead
As any nail in town,--
For though distress had cut him up,
It could not cut him down!

A dozen men sat on his corpse,
To find out why he died--
And they buried Ben in four cross-roads,
With a stake in his inside!

_Thomas Hood._

SALLY SIMPKIN'S LAMENT

"Oh! what is that comes gliding in,
And quite in middling haste?
It is the picture of my Jones,
And painted to the waist.

"It is not painted to the life,
For where's the trousers blue?
O Jones, my dear!--Oh, dear! my Jones,
What is become of you?"

"O Sally, dear, it is too true,--
The half that you remark
Is come to say my other half
Is bit off by a shark!

"O Sally, sharks do things by halves,
Yet most completely do!
A bite in one place seems enough,
But I've been bit in two.

"You know I once was all your own,
But now a shark must share!
But let that pass--for now to you
I'm neither here nor there.

"Alas! death has a strange divorce
Effected in the sea,
It has divided me from you,
And even me from me!

"Don't fear my ghost will walk o' nights
To haunt, as people say;
My ghost _can't_ walk, for, oh! my legs
Are many leagues away!

"Lord! think when I am swimming round,
And looking where the boat is,
A shark just snaps away a _half,_
Without 'a _quarter's notice_.'

"One half is here, the other half
Is near Columbia placed;
O Sally, I have got the whole
Atlantic for my waist.

"But now, adieu--a long adieu!
I've solved death's awful riddle,
And would say more, but I am doomed
To break off in the middle!"

_Thomas Hood._

DEATH'S RAMBLE

One day the dreary old King of Death
Inclined for some sport with the carnal,
So he tied a pack of darts on his back,
And quietly stole from his charnel.

His head was bald of flesh and of hair,
His body was lean and lank;
His joints at each stir made a crack, and the cur
Took a gnaw, by the way, at his shank.

And what did he do with his deadly darts,
This goblin of grisly bone?
He dabbled and spilled man's blood, and he killed
Like a butcher that kills his own.

The first he slaughtered it made him laugh
(For the man was a coffin-maker),
To think how the mutes, and men in black suits,
Would mourn for an undertaker.

Dea