How I pleaded in vain for a truce!
Too frightened to shoo them away,
I could never say Boh to a Goose!
I have lived through a number of phases,
I have rhymed of the grave and the gay,
But the clatter of critical phrases,
But the moralist armed for the fray,
I have fled in unseemly dismay,
Since the Gander—’tis all my excuse—
For, in brief, since that terrible day—