AN AUTHOR'S EPITAPH.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue XXI, 23 November 1895, Page 664

AN AUTHOR'S EPITAPH.

HY HIMSELf. Stay, reader, stay, and shed a tear O’er one whose race is run, A Shakespeare, Homer, Clement Scott, And Sala rolled in one ; Who, sad to say, though filled with zeal, No opus could complete, Because they would not regulate The music of the street. If solemn thoughts employed his pen, There straightway came along A grinning Spaniard, with a gift Of incoherent song. And when with light and airy wit Some meriy tale he’d tel). There rose upon the trembling air A sad, funeral knell. With Hying pen he once began An epic great and grand ; ’Twas very quickly ended by A mad Teutonic band. The lyric, almost too sublime For human lips to speak, Gave up its blameless ghostlet at A bagpipe’s horrid squeak. The dancing monkey knew bis times For study deep and brown. And danced, to cheer him, to the tune Of * Strolling Round the Town.’ So here he lies, with not a wreath To keep his mtm’ry green, A dreamer, all unknown to fame, Of books that might have been.