The Eighth Sin/Ballade of Songs Unsung

by Christopher Morley

BALLADE OF SONGS UNSUNG.

I meant to write some other verse
Some better, and some vastly worse.
I meant to write, and never did,
And now the coining Schools forbid.
I'll mention what I hoped to sing
To guard against all trespassing.

One on the Franco-Prussian War
(It never had been done before)
But now, I render thanks to Allah,
It has been done by P. G - - d - ll - .

I had a very real wish
To write a trifling thing on fish
It was The Goldfish at the Tate—
That one I fear will have to wait.

A Ballad of the Law Prelim.
(That one was rather like a hymn.)
Some musings that I had to burn
For being too like Laurence Sterne,
These would have done exceeding well
As a racy villanelle.

A sonnet To a Lady's Skull
Now Used for My Tobacco Ash
Would have been wistful-fanciful
And rich in Oriental pash.
The Charters quaintly called Select
I hoped in metre to dissect;
Also (somewhat analogous)
To render the Dialogus
(You know it?) de Scaccario
And put my tutor in a glow.
The University Statutes
Afford some still ungarnered fruits—
In featly-footed terza-rima
They'd please the dilettante dreamer.

Then there was something rather coarser,
A fragment in the vein of Chaucer,
You would have dubbed the thing robust—
I'll try it yet, I really must . . .

But most of all my soul regrets
My still unwritten triolets.