Serial Game Movie

 The gallows in my garden, people say,
 Is new and neat and adequately tall.
 I tie the noose on in a knowing way
 As one that knots his necktie for a ball;
 But just as all the neighbors - on the wall -
 Are drawing a long breath to shout "Hurray!"
 The strangest whim has seized me . . . After all
 I think I will not hang myself to-day.

 To-morrow is the time I get my pay -
 My uncle's sword is hanging in the hall -
 I see a little cloud all pink and gray -
 Perhaps the rector's mother will not call -
 I fancy that I heard from Mr. Gall
 That mushrooms could be cooked another way -
 I never read the works of Juvenal -
 I think I will not hang myself to-day.

 The world will have another washing day;
 The decadents decay; the pedants pall;
 And H. G. Wells has found that children play,
 And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall;
 Rationalists are growing rational -
 And through thick woods one finds a stream astray,
 So secret that the very sky seems small -
 I think I will not hang myself to-day.

 ENVOI

 Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal,
 The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way;
 Even to-day your royal head may fall -
 I think I will not hang myself to-day.

 After Byron

 Dear Mr. Editor: I wish to say -
 If you will not be angry at my, writing it -
 But I've been used, since childhood's happy day,
 When I have thought of something, to inditing it;
 I seldom think of things; and, by the way,
 Although this meter may not be exciting, it
 Enables one to be extremely terse,
 Which is not what one always is in verse.

 I used to know a man, - such things befall
 The observant wayfarer through Fate's domain -
 He was a man, take him for all in all,
 We shall not look upon his like again;
 I know that statement's not original;
 What statement is, since Shakespeare? or, since Cain,
 What murder? I believe 'twas Shakespeare said it, or
 Perhaps it may have been your Fighting Editor.

 Though why an Editor should fight, or why
 A Fighter should abase himself to edit,
 Are problems far too difficult and high
 For me to solve with any sort of credit.
 Some greatly more accomplished man than I
 Must tackle them: let's say then Shakespeare said it;
 And, if he did not, Lewis Morris may
 (Or even if he did). Some other day,

 When I have nothing pressing to impart,
 I should not mind dilating on this matter.
 I feel its import both in head and heart,
 And always did, - especially the latter.
 I could discuss it in the busy mart
 Or on the lonely housetop; hold! this chatter
 Diverts me from my purpose. To the point:
 The time, as Hamlet said, is out of joint,

 And perhaps I was born to set it right, -
 A fact I greet with perfect equanimity.
 I do not put it down to "cursed spite,"
 I don't see any cause for cursing in it. I
 Have always taken very great delight
 In such pursuits since first I read divinity.
 Whoever will may write a nation's songs
 As long as I'm allowed to right its wrongs.

 What's Eton but a nursery of wrong-righters,
 A mighty mother of effective men;
 A training ground for amateur reciters,
 A sharpener of the sword as of the pen;
 A factory of orators and fighters,
 A forcing-house of genius? Now and then
 The world at large shrinks back, abashed and beaten,
 Unable to endure the glare of Eton.

 I think I said I knew a man: what then?
 I don't suppose such knowledge is forbid.
 We nearly all do, more or less, know men, -
 Or think we do; nor will a man get rid
 Of that delusion while he wields a pen.
 But who this man was, what, if aught, he did,
 Nor why I mentioned him, I do not know,
 Nor what I "wished to say" a while ago.