Classic Poem

Friends, when I think of how we talked and bored and bawled and banged
I often really wonder why we none of us are hanged
None really hanged. Attempts, perhaps, some efforts and no more
I knew a Mental Healer who came to the side door
Who said I fired a shot at him and hit; which is absurd.
Police enquiries, too, were made at Fernley, I have heard
When the Chinese Mandarin swotting hard with Oldershaw and staff
Performed the Hara-Kiri to make the children laugh.
And Fordham had a narrow squeak; when reeling from the Troc
He lost his way and lost his wig and strayed into the dock.
Where in ecstatic slumber through the trial he remained
Till half-way through the summing up, the error was explained
And Salter knifed a policeman; but the wound, alas, has healed.
A person selling Burberys who came to Beaconsfield
Saved Lawrence from the gallows by the speed at which he ran.
And Maurice did give orders to electrocute a man:
Only a new assistant, whose diction was at fault,
Electroplated him instead: a technical assault.
And Waldo had a bright idea to put us at our ease
“Be insured against the Gallows and then murder whom you please.”
His clients were but half convinced, however he harangued,
They guessed some fallacy; and still were hanged if they'd be hanged.
Beside the paper mill and moat, are publishers regaled?
Moonlight. A publisher. The pond. But better thoughts prevailed.
I know not how in foreign lands fate missed our wandering lambs
How oft the lucky rope has broke for Digby or for Sams.
How Bertram dodged his warders; or if ten times or again
“Reprieve for Langdon-Davies!” rang thundering through the plain
Bentley, who murders every night, escaping every time
He has explained his method in a recent work on crime.
Friends; we are fallen on evil days; wild years are closing in
The awful years when men can die for virtue, not for sin
As in such bloody splendour set the sun of the Gironde
Yet men could still look over it and see a star beyond.
Those young; learned and unnamed, like us in many ways.
Who perished at the palisades, singing the Marseillaise
Well, friends, if you and I should come to dangle on a string
Unless the Sec. has lost the notes, we shall have songs to sing.