Ballads for Sale

Have a ballad, good people,
A sheet of song-words just pulled from the press.
A new song all a-flutter in the wind.
Did you hear the drums and fife,
And the boys and girls calling down the side streets?
Throw up your windows,
You, who live in the Square,
For I am passing by your doors
With sheets and sheets of songs,
To tickle your tears and your laughter
And set your feet a-jigging.

Will you have a penny posy of daisies and dandelions,
and true love under a hedge?
For another penny, I can give you roses,
Fountains, fish-ponds,
and a dim old palace streaked with moonlight.
If the sea is your choice,
You must give me silver.
The sea is a hard thing to get into a song.
Martial ballads bring silver too.
They are a bit out of style,
But I have two or three,
with guns popping like the Fourth of July,
Printed in red ink,
with a skull and cross-bones at the corners.
Then there is a merry song of a moor and a cocoanut,
and a clown who went to Heaven in a fire-balloon.
Ha! Ha! You will hold your sides,
and all for a bit of white silver.
But it is yellow gold I must have for love songs,
A drop of blood for a drop of gold,
and fourteen lines is a guinea.

See the wind flutter my songs,
They almost sing themselves out here in the sunshine.
Step up, good people,
And buy a fine ballad crisp from the press,
with the ink scarce dried upon it.