The House-Hunter

I have been looking at a hovel At the back o’ behind; It was like something out of a Welsh novel Of the grimly realistic kind. It clung to a mountain-side sternly and sadly As a fly clings to the wall, It had a tin shed or two, and the roof leaked badly, And there was no road at all. I have been looking at a pig-sty (Though they didn’t call it so), it wasn’t a very nice or a very big sty even as sties go; its walls were as wet as the inside of a cistern, I nearly broke my neck in the “grounds,” There was a rat-hole in the dinning room floor you could put your feet in, And the price was fifteen hundred pounds. I have been looking at a shanty At the end of a long lane; There wasn’t a bath, and anyway the water was scanty, It depended entirely on the rain; The chimney smoked like the dickens when it was gusty, You couldn’t swing the smallest size of cat; There was nowhere to keep the coals and kitchen stove was rusty, And they wanted two thousand for that. * * * * * * * I have looked at very many hovels, I have seen pig-sties galore; I have looked at them until my spirit grovels And my heart is sick and sore; I cannot find a decent roof to cover me, Be it large or be it small; I will sit down in a ditch with an umbrella over me And live nowhere at all.