Guest Blogger: P.G. Wodehouse
For One Night Only (A Tragedy)
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P.G. Wodehouse |
I MET him in a crowd:
As if with care ’twas weighted,
His shapely back was bowed,
His brow was corrugated.
I asked him “Why so pale?
What grief your soul has cankered?”
And gleaned his painful tale
Over a friendly tankard.
“ONCE,” the sad wight began,
“I knew not what the blues meant:
I was a genial man,
And never shirked amusement.
I shot, I rode, I rinked,
I trod the mazy measure:
My life, to be succinct,
Was one long round of pleasure.
“IN those delightful days,
I do not mind confessing,
That, if I had a craze,
It was for perfect dressing.
One night – it serves to show
How labor omnia vincit –
I tied a perfect bow:
I’ve not been happy since it.
“I WORKED with watchful eye,
With fingers swift but wary:
It seemed a decent tie,
But not extraordinary.
But when at length I gazed,
To put the final clip in,
I staggered back, amazed,
Ejaculating ‘Rippin’!’
“OH, had I but the pen
That serves the inspired poet,
I’d try to picture, then,
(With proper force and glow), it.
The billowy waves of white ...
The folds ... The spick-and-span knot ...
Were I a bard, I might;
But, as it is, I cannot.
“SUFFICE it to observe
That on minute inspection
It showed in every curve
The hall-mark of perfection.
The sort of tie which you
When wrapped in sweetest sleep oc-
Casionally view:
A tie to mark an epoch.
“THAT night no peer I owned,
I carried all before me.
Society”—he moaned—
“United to adore me.
Whenever I passed by,
Men stopped their conversation,
Drank in that Perfect Tie
In silent adoration.
“SINCE then the striking feat
(Such dreams th’ ambitious male lure)
I’ve striven to repeat:
Result: completest failure.
Though toiling, as I say,
As much as blood and flesh ’ll,
The bows I tie today
Are good, but nothing special.
“SO now my fellow-man
I shun, no matter who ’tis:
As far as mortal can,
I cut my social duties.
I seldom eat or rest,
I’m gloomy, haggard, mirthless.
To one who’s known the best,
All other things are worthless.”
– Punch, June 10, 1903.
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