BALLADE OF LOST REPARTEES.
When mirthful humours reign supreme,
And heated revellers are prone
To make sound wisdom kick the beam,
While vain wine-bubble wit alone
Has weight, we, mostly, can depone
To feeling joy to blankness fade
On finding, now our chance has flown,
The repartee we might have made.
One prating fool is apt to deem
No jesting pretty save his own;
Another strives, whate'er the theme,
To make all comers, passive grown,
"Perform the office of a hone"[*]
For sharpening his witty blade;—
Too late below our breath we moan
The repartee we might have made.
Of course, it now contrives to seem
So patent to the dullest drone;
And, if we wake or if we dream,
It weighs upon us like a stone,
But, unlike, cannot now be thrown;
And thus we languish in the shade,
Because the world has never known
The repartee we might have made.
Envoi.
My friends, a certain sage has shown
What paving-stones below are laid;
Now learn that on each blast is blown
The repartee we might have made!
"Fungar vice cotis, acutum
Reddere quæ ferrum valet, exsors ipsa secandi."
Horace. De Arte Poetica.