The Craven
1845
The Evening Mirror Mar 25 1845
“Dr. F. FELIX GOURAUD, of 67 Walker street, again deems it necessary to caution the public against purchasing any imitations of his matchless Italian Medicated Soap, incomparable Poudres Subtiles and marvellous Grecian Hair Dye.”
Once upon a midnight dreary, while with toil and care quite weary,
I was pondering on man’s proneness to deceitfulness and guile,
Soon I fell into a seeming state ’twixt wakefulness and dreaming,
When my mind’s eye saw a scheming fellow counterfeiting Soap—
Yes! counterfeiting GOURAUD’s matchless Medicated Soap;
Twisting sand into a rope! . . . .
I said — “thou man of evil (I will not call thee devil,)
Get thee back into the darkness and the night’s Plutonian shore!
By my fame thou hast a token, that the spells which thou hast spoken,
Are scattered all, and broken! Craven, wilt thou now give o’er,
And never counterfeit my Soap or Poudres any more?”
Quoth the craven — “Never more!”
Return to the Quaint and Curious index for more pastiches and parodies of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”.
