Not a Sou Had He Got

(Parody on Wolfe’s “Burial of Sir John Moore”)

NOT a sou had he got, not a guinea or note,

And he looked confoundedly flurried,

As he bolted away without paying his shot,

And the landlady after him hurried.

We saw him again at dead of night,

When home from the club returning;

We twigged the doctor beneath the light

Of the gas-lamp brilliantly burning.

All bare, and exposed to the midnight dews,

Reclined in the gutter we found him;

And he looked like a gentleman taking a snooze,

With his Marshall cloak around him.

“The doctor’s as drunk as the devil,” we said,

And we managed a shutter to borrow;

We raised him, and sighed at the thought that his head

Would “consumedly ache” on the morrow.

We bore him home, and we put him to bed,

And we told his wife and his daughter

To give him, next morning, a couple of red

Herrings, with soda-water.

Loudly they talked of his money that’s gone,

And his lady began to upbraid him;

But little he recked, so they let him snore on

’Neath the counterpane just as we laid him.

We tucked him in, and had hardly done,

When, beneath the window calling,

We heard the rough voice of a son of a gun

Of a watchman “One o’clock” bawling.

Slowly and sadly we all walked down

From his room in the uppermost story;

A rush light was placed in the cold hearth-stone;

And we left him alone in his glory.