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<h4>SALLY SIMPKIN'S LAMENT;</h4>
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OR, JOHN JONES'S KIT-CAT-ASTROPHE.
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"He left his body to the sea,
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And made a shark his legatee."
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BRYAN AND PERENNE.
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"Oh! what is that comes gliding in,
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And quite in middling haste?
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It is the picture of my Jones,
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And painted to the waist.
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"It is not painted to the life,
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For where's the trowsers blue?
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Oh Jones, my dear!—Oh dear! my Jones,
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What is become of you?"
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"Oh! Sally dear, it is too true,—
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The half that you remark
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Is come to say my other half
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Is bit off by a shark!
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"Oh! Sally, sharks do things by halves,
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Yet most completely do!
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A bite in one place soems enough,
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But I've been bit in two.
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"You know I once was all your own,
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But now a shark must share!
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But let that pass—for now, to you
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I'm neither here nor there."
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"Alas! death has a strange divorce
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Effected in the sea,
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It has divided me from you,
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And even me from me!
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"Don't fear my ghost will walk o' nights
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To haunt, as people say;
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My ghost <i>can't</i> walk, for, oh! my legs
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Are many leagues away!
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"Lord! think when I am swimming round,
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And looking where the boat is,
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A shark just snaps away a <i>half</i>,
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Without a '<i>quarter's</i> notice.'
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"One half is here, the other half
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Is near Columbia placed;
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Oh! Sally, I have got the whole
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Atlantic for my waist.
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"But now, adieu—a long adieu!
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I've solved death's awful riddle,
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And would say more, but I am doomed
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To break off in the middle!"
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