Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE OVERWORKED GHOST, by RICHARD THOMAS LE GALLIENNE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE OVERWORKED GHOST, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: When the embalmer closed my eyes
Last Line: That's patience worth there on the phone!
Subject(s): Death; Worth, Patience; Dead, The


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 seances, 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!





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