HAVE you heard, my dear Anne, how my spirits are sunk?
Have you heard of the cause? Oh, the loss of my Trunk!
From exertion or firmness I’ve never yet slunk;
But my fortitude’s gone with the loss of my Trunk!
Stout Lucy, my maid, is a damsel of spunk;
Yet she weeps night and day for the loss of my Trunk!
I’d better turn nun, and coquet with a monk;
For with whom can I flirt without aid from my Trunk!
Accurs’d be the thief, the old rascally hunks,
Who rifles the fair, and lays hands on their Trunks!
He, who robs the King’s stores of the least bit of junk,
Is hang’d — while he’s safe, who has plunder’d my Trunk!
There’s a phrase amongst lawyers, when nunc’s put for tunc;
But, tunc and nunc both, must I grieve for my Trunk!
Huge leaves of that great commentator, old Brunck,
Perhaps was the paper that lin’d my poor Trunk!
But my rhymes are all out; — for I dare not use st — k;
‘Twou’d shock Sheridan more than the loss of my Trunk.
[From Moore’s Sheridan, from MSS.]