The Book of Humorous Verse — Carolyn Wells

Quixotic is his enterprise and hopeless his adventure is, Who seeks for jocularities that haven't yet been said; The world has joked incessantly for over fifty centuries, And every joke that's possible has long ago been made. I started as a humourist with lots of mental fizziness, But humour is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse; For my stock-in-trade, my fixtures and the good-will of the business No reasonable offer I am likely to refuse. And if anybody choose He may circulate the news That no reasonable offer I am likely to refuse. Oh, happy was that humourist -- the first that made a pun at all -- Who when a joke occurred to him, however poor and mean, Was absolutely certain that it never had been done at all -- How popular at dinners must that humourist have been! Oh, the days when some step-father for a query held a handle out, -- The door-mat from the scraper, is it distant very far? And when no one knew where Moses was when Aaron put the candle out, And no one had discovered that a door could be a-jar! But your modern hearers are In their tastes particular, And they sneer if you inform them that a door can be a jar! In search of quip and quiddity I've sat all day alone, apart -- And all that I could hit on as a problem was -- to find Analogy between a scrag of mutton and a Bony-part, Which offers slight employment to the speculative mind.