Tales of a Wayside Inn

One hundred years ago, and something more, / In Queen Street, Portsmouth, at her tavern door, / Neat as a pin, and blooming as a rose, / Stood Mistress Stavers in her furbelows, / Just as her cuckoo-clock was striking nine. / Above her head, resplendent on the sign, / The portrait of the Earl of Halifax, / In scarlet coat and periwig of flax, / Surveyed at leisure all her varied charms, / Her cap, her bodice, her white folded arms, / And half resolved, though he was past his prime, / And rather damaged by the lapse of time, / To fall down at her feet and to declare / The passion that had driven him to despair. / For from his lofty station he had seen / Stavers, her husband, dressed in bottle-green, / Drive his new Flying Stage-coach, four in hand, / Down the long lane, and out into the land, / And knew that he was far upon the way / To Ipswich and to Boston on the Bay!

Just then the meditations of the Earl / Were interrupted by a little girl, / Barefooted, ragged, with neglected hair, / Eyes full of laughter, neck and shoulders bare, / A thin slip of a girl, like a new moon, / Sure to be rounded into beauty soon, / A creature men would worship and adore, / Though now in mean habiliments she bore / A pail of water, dripping, through the street / And bathing, as she went her naked feet.