The Overworked Ghost Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCBDBD EFEFGFG HIH JIJ KLKLGLG LMLMNMN OPOPFPF QRQRLRL NSNSTST USUSFSF VWXWYWY| When the embalmer closed my eyes | A |
| And all the family went in black | B |
| And shipped me off to Paradise | C |
| I had no thought of coming back | B |
| I dreamed of undisturbed repose | D |
| Until the Judgment Day went crack | B |
| Tucked safely in from top to toes | D |
| - | |
| I've done my bit I said I've earned | E |
| The right to take things at my ease | F |
| When folk declared the dead returned | E |
| I called it all tomfooleries | F |
| They are too glad to get to bed | G |
| To stretch their weary limbs in peace | F |
| Done with it all the lucky dead | G |
| - | |
| But scarcely had I laid me down | H |
| When comes a voice Is that you Joe | I |
| I'm calling you from Williamstown | H |
| Knock once for 'yes ' and twice for 'no ' | - |
| Then hornet mad I knocked back two | J |
| The table shook I banged it so | I |
| Not Joe they said Then tell us who | J |
| - | |
| We're waiting is there no one here | K |
| No friend you have a message for | L |
| But I pretended not to hear | K |
| Perhaps he fell in the great war | L |
| Perhaps he's German someone said | G |
| How goes it on the other shore | L |
| That's no way to address the dead | G |
| - | |
| And so they talked till I got sore | L |
| And made the blooming table rock | M |
| And ribald oaths and curses swore | L |
| And strange words guaranteed to shock | M |
| He's one of those queer spooks they call | N |
| A poltergeist the ghosts that mock | M |
| Throw things said one who knew it all | N |
| - | |
| I wish an old thigh bone was round | O |
| To break your silly head I knocked | P |
| A humourist of the burial ground | O |
| A bright young college graduate mocked | P |
| Then a young girl fell in a trance | F |
| And foamed Get out we are deadlocked | P |
| And give some other ghost a chance | F |
| - | |
| Such was my first night in the tomb | Q |
| Where soft sleep was to hold me fast | R |
| I little knew my weary doom | Q |
| It even makes a ghost aghast | R |
| To think of all the years in store | L |
| The slave as long as death shall last | R |
| To ouija boards forevermore | L |
| - | |
| For morning noon and night they call | N |
| Alive some fourteen hours a day | S |
| I worked but now I work them all | N |
| No sooner down my head I lay | S |
| A lady writer knocks me up | T |
| About a novel or a play | S |
| Nor gives me time for bite or sup | T |
| - | |
| I hear her damned typewriter click | U |
| With all the things she says I say | S |
| You'd think the public would get sick | U |
| And that's my only hope some day | S |
| Then s ances each night in dozens | F |
| I must attend their parts to play | S |
| For dead grandpas and distant cousins | F |
| - | |
| O for my life to live again | V |
| I'd know far better than to die | W |
| You'd never hear me once complain | X |
| Could I but see the good old sky | W |
| For here they work me to the bone | Y |
| Rest don't believe it Well good by | W |
| That's Patience Worth there on the phone | Y |
Richard Le Gallienne
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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