'Twas twelve o'clock, not twelve at night,
But twelve o'clock at noon;
Because the sun was shining bright
And not the silver moon.
A proper time for friends to call,
Or pots, or penny-post;
When lo! as Phoebe sat at work,
She saw her Pompey's ghost!
Now when a female has a call
From people that are dead,
Like Paris ladies, she receives
Her visitors in bed.
But Pompey's spirit would not come
Like spirits that are white,
Because he was a Blackamoor,
And wouldn't show at night!
But of all unexpected things
That happen to us here,
The most unpleasant is a rise
In what is very dear.
So Phoebe screamed an awful scream
To prove the seaman's text,
That after black appearances,
White squalls will follow next.
"O Phoebe dear! Oh, Phoebe dear!
Don't go and scream or faint;
You think because I'm black, I am
The Devil, but I ain't!
Behind the heels of Lady Lambe
I walked while I had breath,
But that is past, and I am now
A-walking after death!
"No murder, though, I come to tell,
By base and bloody crime;
So, Phoebe dear, put off your fits
To some more fitting time.
No coroner, like a boatswain's mate,
My body need attack,
With his round dozen to find out
Why I have died so black.
"One Sunday, shortly after tea,
My skin began to burn,
As if I had in my inside
A heater like a urn.
Delirious in the night I grew,
And as I lay in bed,
They say I gathered all the wool
You see upon my head.
"His lordship for his doctor sent,
My treatment to begin;
I wish that he had called him out
Before he called him in!
For though to physic he was bred,
And passed at Surgeons' Hall,
To make his post a sinecure,
He never cured at all!
"The Doctor looked about my breast
And then about my back,
And then he shook his head and said,
'Your case looks very black.'
At first he sent me hot cayenne,
And then gamboge to swallow.
But still my fever would not turn
To scarlet or to yellow!
"With madder and with turmeric,
He made his next attack;
But neither he nor all his drugs
Could stop my dying black.
At last I got so sick of life,
And sick of being dosed,
One Monday morning I gave up
My physic and the ghost!
"Oh, Phoebe dear, what pain it was
To sever every tie!
You know black beetles feel as much
As giants when they die.
And if there is a bridal bed,
Or bride of little worth,
It's lying in a bed of mould,
Along with Mother Earth.
"Alas! Some happy, happy day,
In church I hoped to stand,
And like a muff of sable skin
Receive your lily hand.
But sternly with that piebald match,
My fate untimely clashes;
For now, like Pompey-double-i,
I'm sleeping in my ashes!
"And now farewell! a last farewell!
I'm wanted down below,
And have but time enough to add
One word before I go--
In mourning crêpe and bombazine
Ne'er spend your precious pelf;
Don't go in black for me--for I
Can do it for myself.
"Henceforth within my grave I rest,
But Death, who there inherits,
Allowed my spirit leave to come,
You seemed so near your spirits:
But do not sigh, and do not cry,
By grief too much engrossed,
Nor for a ghost of color turn
The color of a ghost!
"Again, farewell, my Phoebe dear!
Once more a last adieu!
For I must make myself as scarce
As swans of sable hue."
From black to gray, from gray to nought
The shape began to fade--
And like an egg, though not so white,
The ghost was newly laid!"