| Quixotic is his enterprise and hopeless his adventure is, Who seeks for jocularities that haven't yet been said; The world has joked incessantly for over fifty centuries, And every joke that's possible has long ago been made. I started as a humourist with lots of mental fizziness, But humour is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse; For my stock-in-trade, my fixtures and the good-will of the business No reasonable offer I am likely to refuse. And if anybody choose He may circulate the news That no reasonable offer I am likely to refuse. Oh, happy was that humourist—the first that made a pun at all— Who when a joke occurred to him, however poor and mean, Was absolutely certain that it never had been done at all— How popular at dinners must that humourist have been! Oh, the days when some step-father for a query held a handle out— The door-mat from the scraper, is it distant very far? And when no one knew where Moses was when Aaron put the candle out, And no one had discovered that a door could be a-jar! But your modern hearers are In their tastes particular, And they sneer if you inform them that a door can be a jar! In search of quip and quiddity I've sat all day alone, apart— And all that I could hit on as a problem was—to find Analogy between a scrag of mutton and a Bony-part, Which offers slight employment to the speculative mind. For you cannot call it very good, however great your charity— It's not the sort of humour that is greeted with a shout— And I've come to the conclusion that my mine of jocularity, In present Anno Domini is worked completely out! Though the notion you may scout, I can prove beyond a doubt That my mine of jocularity is worked completely out! W. S. Gilbert. |
