The Bailiff
1880
Norwood News and Crystal Palace Chronicle, 17 Jan 1880, p. 5
Once upon an ev’ning dreary, to myself I put this query,
“Can I overcome my troubles this year as I’ve done before?”
While I to myself was speaking, just outside I heard a creaking,
As of some one slily sneaking, sneaking up to my front door.
“’Tis some creditor,” I muttered, “sneaking up to my front door;
Merely this, and nothing more.”
Suddenly my heart quite failed me, and a horrid dread assailed me,
As a fearful thought now struck me, made me tremble o’er and o’er.
“How my wife will at me rail if this should chance to be a bailiff,
For, of course, there’ll be a sale if he sets foot within our door;
I must do my best, however, not to let him in our door;
For I can do nothing more.”
Not a moment then I waited; silently, with breath abated,
Every window soon I fastened, and I bolted every door,
Then into the darkness peering, as I stood there trembling, fearing,
To my house I saw him steering and I thought that all was o’er,
For I saw a look of triumph spreading all his features o’er;
And could think of nothing more.
Back into my parlour turning, all my soul within me burning;
“Oh! that he would go away and give to me but one chance more.
Gladly would I give up pleasure, willingly devote my leisure,
To accumulate such treasure, as would pay my debts, and more.
Too late, alas! I hear him forcing, breaking in the kitchen door.
Crash! he’s in; down falls the door.”
“Bailiff,” said I, “Man of evil! Bailiff still, if man or devil!
By the heavens that bend above us, by the God we both adore,
Tell me that my eyes deceive me, tell me that you soon will leave me;
Say at least that you’ll reprieve me and my wife whom I adore,
And that fair of fairest helpmates whom the neighbours all adore.”
Quoth the bailiff, “Nevermore.”
And the bailiff now has left us; but alas! he has bereft us
Of each single little treasure which our home contained before.
“Where are now our goods and chattels? Where our pictures of great battles?
Where our very children’s rattles? gone from us for evermore.”
Dreamily I put the question, “Will they come to us once more?”
Echo answered, “Nevermore.”
This is one of several entries printed in the Norwood News and Crystal Palace Chronicle’s competition to create a poem in the style of Poe’s Raven. The four poems were divided into two Class I winners (The Bailiff and Hope), and two Class II winners (The Recollections of a “Two-Pair Back” and The Angel).
Return to the Quaint and Curious index for more pastiches and parodies of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”.
