Their shuttlecock battle of papers,

Their saccharine parley of lies;

When the plenipotentiary wrangle

Is tied in a chaos of knots,

And becomes an unwindable tangle

Of verbals unmarried to thoughts;

When they’ve anguished and argued profoundly,

Asserted, assumed, and averred,

Then I end up the dialogue roundly

With my monosyllabical word.