Ventures Into Verse / Being various ballads, ballades, rondeaux, triolets, songs, quatrains, odes and roundels, all rescued from the potters' field of old files and here given decent burial

by H. L. Mencken

And blasts the growing ones—alas!

Whene'er he comes to scar and kill,

It's up to me.

I run not in the croaker class,

But when I see the autumn pass,

Of crushing woes I have my fill—

To buy a Christmas gift for Jill

A horde of gold I must amass—

It's up to me.