(Apologies to G.K. Chesterton)
A Ballade of Suicide, Circular
The gallows in the garden, scholars say,
Is new and neat and adequately tall;
I tie the noose on in a knowing way
As knot a necktie for inaugural;
But just as rotarians round the mall
Are drawing bead and breath to shout "Hurray!"
The strangest whim has seized me. . . After all
I think I will not hang myself to-day.
To-morrow is the time to have my say
My uncle's sword is hanging in the hall
I see so many things now gone astray
Perhaps the village half-wits will NOT gall
I fancy that I heard a gavel fall
And goose-flesh could be cooked another way
I must frame that print of Nast’s cartoon scrawl
I think I will not hang myself to-day.
The wrong will have another wishing-day;
The ‘Betters’ betray; the pundits pall;
And dire fog fake has found that Donkeys bray,
And cheerless Scrooge discovered that they brawl;
Irrationalists grow irrational
And through Green woods one finds a stream astray,
So stingy that the very sky seems small
I think I will not hang myself to-day.
ENVOI
I can hear the marksmen the trumpets call,
The snick-snack clack of orders they obey;
Ready, aim – Nay, I’ll not wait against the wall
And no I will not hang myself to-day.