“Tell Annie I’ll be home in time To help her with her Christmas—tree.” That’s what he wrote, and hark! the chim… Of Christmas bells, and where is he? And how the house is dark and sad,

Full well I trow that when I die Down drops the curtain; Another show is all my eye And Betty Martin. I know the score, and with a smile

When you come home I’ll not be round To welcome you. They’ll take you to a grassy mound So neat and new; Where I’ll be sleeping—O so sound!

I used to think a pot of ink Held magic in its fluid, And I would ply a pen when I Was hoary a a Druid; But as I scratch my silver thatch

We pitied him because He lived alone; His tiny cottage was His only own. His little garden had

I never could imagine God: I don’t suppose I ever will. Beside His altar fire I nod With senile drowsiness but still In old of age as sight grows dim

Since four decades you’ve been to me Both Guide and Friend, I fondly hope you’ll always be, Right to the end; And though my rhymes you rarely scan

With belly like a poisoned pup Said I: ‘I must give bacon up: And also, I profanely fear, I must abandon bread and beer That make for portliness they say;

I do not write for love of pelf, Nor lust for phantom fame; I do not rhyme to please myself, Nor yet to win acclaim: No, strange to say it is my plan,

While I make rhymes my brother John Makes shiny shoes which dames try on, And finding to their fit and stance They buy and wear with elegance; But mine is quite another tale,—

One day the Great Designer sought His Clerk of Birth and Death. Said he: “Two souls are in my thought, to whom I gave life—breath. I deemed my work was fitly done,

She lay like a saint on her copper couch… Like an angel asleep she lay, In the stare of the ghoulish folks that… Past the Dead and sneak away. Then came old Jules of the sightless ga…

Ruins in Rome are four a penny, And here along the Appian Way I see the monuments of many Esteemed almighty in their day. . . . Or so he makes me understand —

For failure I was well equipped And should have come to grief, By atavism grimly gripped, A fool beyond belief. But lo! the Lord was good to me,