Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE PLAYED-OUT HUMORIST, by WILLIAM SCHWENCK GILBERT


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE PLAYED-OUT HUMORIST, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Quixotic is his enterprise and hopeless his adventure is
Last Line: That my mine of jocularity is worked completely out!
Alternate Author Name(s): Gilbert, W. S.
Subject(s): Humorists


QUIXOTIC is his enterprise and hopeless his adventure is,
Who seeks for jocularities that haven't yet been said;
The world has joked incessantly for over fifty centuries,
And every joke that's possible has long ago been made.
I started as a humourist with lots of mental fizziness,
But humour is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse;
For my stock-in-trade, my fixtures and the good-will of the business
No reasonable offer I am likely to refuse.
And if anybody choose
He may circulate the news
That no reasonable offer I am likely to refuse.

Oh, happy was that humourist -- the first that made a pun at all --
Who when a joke occurred to him, however poor and mean,
Was absolutely certain that it never had been done at all --
How popular at dinners must that humourist have been!
Oh, the days when some step-father for a query held a handle out, --
The door-mat from the scraper, is it distant very far?
And when no one knew where Moses was when Aaron put the candle out,
And no one had discovered that a door could be a-jar!
But your modern hearers are
In their tastes particular,
And they sneer if you inform them that a door can be a jar!

In search of quip and quiddity I've sat all day alone, apart --
And all that I could hit on as a problem was -- to find
Analogy between a scrag of mutton and a Bony-part,
Which offers slight employment to the speculative mind.
For you cannot call it very good, however great your charity --
It's not the sort of humour that is greeted with a shout --
And I've come to the conclusion that my mine of jocularity,
In present Anno Domini is worked completely out!
Though the notion you may scout,
I can prove beyond a doubt
That my mine of jocularity is worked completely out!





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