C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
George Walter Thornbury (1828–1876)
The Jacobites’ Club
O
And caught it on his sword;
Another crunched the yellow peel
With his red heel on the board;
A third man cried, “When Jackson comes
Into his large estate,
I’ll pave the old hall down in Kent
With golden bits of eight.”
Fast double-locked the door,
Then held a letter to the fire—
It was all blank before,
But now it’s ruled with crimson lines,
And ciphers odd and quaint:
They cluster round, and nod, and laugh,
As one invokes a saint.
He’s shaven like a priest;
He holds his finger to his nose,
And smiles,—“The wind blows east;
The Dutch canals are frozen, sirs;—
I don’t say anything,
But when you play at ombre next,
Mind that I lead a king.”—
’Twas gay as any fair:
Lord! how they stared to find that bill
Stuck on the royal chair.
Some fools cried ‘Treason!’ some, ‘A plot!’
I slipped behind a screen,
And when the guards came fussing in,
Sat chatting with the Queen.”
In a garret in St. Giles’s,
When I heard the watchman at the door,
And flew up on the tiles.
The press was lowered into the vault,
The types into a drain:
I think you’ll own, my trusty sirs,
I have a ready brain.”
A bell rings—then a shot:
“Shift, boys, the Orangers are come!—
Pity! the punch is hot.”
A clash of swords—a shout—a scream,
And all abreast in force;
The Jacobites, some twenty strong,
Break through and take to horse.