The Played-out Humorist Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDCCECCCCC FGFH IJKIJJLJ MNMNOIIIIII| Quixotic is his enterprise and hopeless his adventure is | A |
| Who seeks for jocularities that haven't yet been said | B |
| The world has joked incessantly for over fifty centuries | C |
| And every joke that's possible has long ago been made | D |
| I started as a humorist with lots of mental fizziness | C |
| But humour is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse | C |
| For my stock in trade my fixtures and the goodwill of the | E |
| business | C |
| No reasonable offer I am likely to refuse | C |
| And if anybody choose | C |
| He may circulate the news | C |
| That no reasonable offer I'm likely to refuse | C |
| - | |
| Oh happy was that humorist the first that made a pun at all | F |
| Who when a joke occurred to him however poor and mean | G |
| Was absolutely certain that it never had been done at all | F |
| How popular at dinners must that humorist have been | H |
| - | |
| Oh the days when some stepfather for the query held a handle out | I |
| The door mat from the scraper is it distant very far | J |
| And when no one knew where Moses was when Aaron blew the candle | K |
| out | I |
| And no one had discovered that a door could be a jar | J |
| But your modern hearers are | J |
| In their tastes particular | L |
| And they sneer if you inform them that a door can be a jar | J |
| - | |
| In search of quip and quiddity I've sat all day alone apart | M |
| And all that I could hit on as a problem was to find | N |
| Analogy between a scrag of mutton and a Bony part | M |
| Which offers slight employment to the speculative mind | N |
| For you cannot call it very good however great your charity | O |
| It's not the sort of humour that is greeted with a shout | I |
| And I've come to the conclusion that my mine of jocularity | I |
| In present Anno Domini is worked completely out | I |
| Though the notion you may scout | I |
| I can prove beyond a doubt | I |
| That my mine of jocularity is utterly worked out | I |
William Schwenck Gilbert
(1)
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