Farewell

'Farewell. What a subject! How sweet     It looks to the careless observer!     So simple; so easy to treat     With tenderness, mark you, and fervour.     Farewell. It's a poem; the song     Of nightingales crying and calling!'     O Reader, you're utterly wrong.     It's not. It's appalling!     And yet when she asked me to send     Some trifle of verse to remind her     Of days that had come to an end,     And one she was leaving behind her,     It looked, as we stood on the shore,     A theme so entirely delightsome     That I, like a lunatic, swore     (Quite calmly) to write some.     I've toiled with unwavering pluck;     I've struggled if ever a man did;     Infringed every postulate, stuck     At nothing, - nay, once, to be candid,     I shifted the cadence - designed     A fresh but unauthorised fare-well;     'Twas plausible, too, but I find     The thing doesn't wear well.     I know that it shouldn't be hard;     That dozens, who claim to be poets,     Could scribble off stuff by the yard     And fare very well; and I know it's     A theme that the Masters of Rhyme     Have written some excellent verse on,     Which proves, as I take it, that I'm     Not that sort of person.     But that we can leave. It remains     To state that my present appearance     Is something too awful, my brains     Are tending to wild incoherence;     My mental condition's absurd;     My thoughts are at sixes and sevens,     Inextrica - lord! what a word!     Inextri - good heavens!     My dear, you can do what you like, -     Forgive, or despise, or abuse me -     But frankly, I'm going on strike,     And really you'll have to excuse me.     Indeed it's my only resource,     For, sure as I stuck to my promise, I'd     Be booked in a week for a course     Of sui-cum-homicide.