"Solomon Grundy

Born on Monday,

Christened on Tuesday,

Married on Wednesday,

Sick on Thursday,

Worse on Friday,

Dead on Saturday,

Buried on Sunday:

This was the end

Of Solomon Grundy."

So sings the unpretentious Muse

That guides the quill of Mother Goose,

And in one week of mortal strife

Presents the epitome of Life:

But down sits Billy Shakspeare next,

And, coolly taking up the text,

His thought pursues the trail of mine,

And, lo! the "Seven Ages" shine!

O world! O critics! can't you see

How Shakspeare plagiarizes me?

And other bards will after come,

To echo in a later age,

"He lived,—he died: behold the sum,

The abstract of the historian's page"

Yet once for all the thing was done,

Complete in Grundy's pilgrimage.

For not a child upon the knee

But hath the moral learned of me;

And measured, in a seven days' span,

The whole experience of man.