How I have labored, night and day,

Just like the hero of a novel,

To drive the hungry wolf away

From my baronial hovel,

To keep the bailiffs from my home,

By finishing this bulky tome.

To such a trying mental strain

My intellect is far from fitted,

Tho’ if I had an ounce more brain

I should be quite half-witted,

And when I wander in my mind

I am most difficult to find.

The sort of life for which I care

Is one combining Peace and Plenty

With laisser aller, laisser faire,

And dolce far niente.

(The heart of ev’ry Bridge-fiend jumps:

Dolce ... ’tis sweet to make “No Trumps.”)

I shrink from work in any shape,—

Too clearly do these pages show it,—

But work is what one can’t escape

And be a Minor Poet;

And critics I may well defy

To find a minor bard than I.

I ought to live out ’Frisco way,

Where working is considered silly,

As Greeley (Horace) used to say,—

Or was it Collier (Willie)?—

“Go West, young man” (I understand),

“Go West and blow up with the land!”

Were I as full of zeal and fun

As Balzac, who could drudge so gaily,

Or diligent as Peter Dunne,

I might accomplish daily

An ode of Pleasure or of Passion

In Ella Wheeler Wilcox fashion;

But, as it is, I sit and toil,

Consuming time and ink and curses

And pints of precious midnight oil

To perpetrate these verses.

If writing them be dull indeed,

Alas! what must they be to read!