The Bench, finding the Admiralty held the hotel for charitable
purposes, granted the application.]
Come, landsmen, give ear to my ditty,
I'll make it as short as I can.
There was once--was it London?--a city
Which stretched from Beersheba to Dan.
Of course that is gammon and spinach,
Or, to put it correctly, a joke.
It extended from Richmond to Greenwich,
This city of darkness and smoke.
It had sailors who ruled o'er the ocean,
And sat all the day upon Boards,
And described, with delightful emotion,
Themselves and their colleagues as "Lords."
They had tubes that were always exploding,
And boilers that never were right,
But had all got a trick of exploding,
And blowing a crew out of sight.
They had docks (and, alas! they had dockers),
They had ships that kept sinking like stones,
Which resulted in filling the lockers
Provided below by D. JONES.
Of their country these lineal successors
Of NELSON deserved very well,
When at last they became the possessors
Of an old fully-licensed hotel.
And they made up a case which was flawless,
For the Sessions that sat at Blackheath,
And they sent--which was strange--Mr. LAWLESS,
Who was crammed full of law to the teeth.
"The days when we all lived in clover,
With whitebait, can never revive,
I assure you," said LAWLESS, "they're over,
But, oh, keep the licence alive.
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