The Overworked Ghost

When the embalmer closed my eyes,     And all the family went in black,     And shipped me off to Paradise,     I had no thought of coming back;     I dreamed of undisturbed repose     Until the Judgment Day went crack,     Tucked safely in from top to toes.     "I've done my bit," I said. "I've earned     The right to take things at my ease!"     When folk declared the dead returned,     I called it all tomfooleries.     "They are too glad to get to bed,     To stretch their weary limbs in peace;     Done with it all - the lucky dead!"     But scarcely had I laid me down,     When comes a voice: "Is that you, Joe?     I'm calling you from Williamstown!     Knock once for 'yes,' and twice for 'no.'"     Then, hornet-mad, I knocked back two -     The table shook, I banged it so -     "Not Joe!" they said, "Then tell us who?     "We're waiting - is there no one here,     No friend, you have a message for?"     But I pretended not to hear.     "Perhaps he fell in the great war?"     "Perhaps he's German?" someone said;     "How goes it on the other shore?"     "That's no way to address the dead!"     And so they talked, till I got sore,     And made the blooming table rock,     And ribald oaths and curses swore,     And strange words guaranteed to shock.     "He's one of those queer spooks they call     A poltergeist - the ghosts that mock,     Throw things - " said one, who knew it all.     "I wish an old thigh-bone was round     To break your silly head!" I knocked.     "A humourist of the burial-ground!"     A bright young college graduate mocked.     Then a young girl fell in a trance,     And foamed: "Get out - we are deadlocked -     And give some other ghost a chance!"     Such was my first night in the tomb,     Where soft sleep was to hold me fast;     I little knew my weary doom!     It even makes a ghost aghast     To think of all the years in store -     The slave, as long as death shall last,     To ouija-boards forevermore.     For morning, noon, and night they call!     Alive, some fourteen hours a day     I worked, but now I work them all.     No sooner down my head I lay,     A lady writer knocks me up     About a novel or a play,     Nor gives me time for bite or sup.     I hear her damned typewriter click     With all the things she says I say,     You'd think the public would get sick;     And that's my only hope - some day!     Then sances, each night in dozens     I must attend, their parts to play     For dead grandpas and distant cousins.     O for my life to live again!     I'd know far better than to die;     You'd never hear me once complain,     Could I but see the good old sky,     For here they work me to the bone;     "Rest!" - don't believe it! Well, good-by!     That's Patience Worth there on the phone!