Righteous Anger

THE lanky hank of a she in the inn over there 

Nearly killed me for asking the loan of a glass of beer: 

May the devil grip the whey-faced slut by the hair, 

And beat bad manners out of her skin for a year. 

That parboiled imp, with the hardest jaw you will see         

On virtue’s path, and a voice that would rasp the dead, 

Came roaring and raging the minute she looked on me, 

And threw me out of the house on the back of my head! 

If I asked her master he’d give me a cask a day; 

But she, with the beer at hand, not a gill would arrange!         

May she marry a ghost and bear him a kitten, and may 

The High King of Glory permit her to get the mange.