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William Schwenck Gilbert - The Played-Out Humorist
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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 humorist 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 goodwill 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`m likely to refuse.

Oh happy was that humorist - 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 humorist have been!

Oh the days when some stepfather for the 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 blew 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:
For you cannot call it very good, however great your charity -
It`s not the sort of humour that is greeted with a shout -
And I`ve come to the conclusion that my mine of jocularity
In present Anno Domini, is worked completely out!
Though the notion you may scout,
I can prove beyond a doubt
That my mine of jocularity is utterly worked out.
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