HAUNTED by W. S. Gilbert HAUNTED? Ay, in a social way, By a body of ghosts in a dread array: But no conventional spectres they--- Appalling, grim, and tricky: I quail at mine as I'd never quail At a fine traditional spectre pale, With a turnip head and a ghostly wail, And a splash of blood on the dicky! Mine are horrible social ghosts, Speeches and women and guests and hosts, Weddings and morning calls and toasts, In every bad variety: Ghosts that hover about the grave Of all that's manly, free, and brave: You'll find their names on the architrave Of that charnel-house, Society. Black Monday--black as its schoolroom ink-- With its dismal boys that snivel and think Of nauseous messes to eat and drink, And a frozen tank to wash in. That was the first that brought me grief And made me weep, till I sought relief In an emblematical handkerchief, To choke such baby bosh in. First and worst in the grim array-- Ghosts of ghosts that have gone their way, Which I wouldn't revive for a single day For all the wealth of PLUTUS-- Are the horrible ghosts that school days scared: If the classical ghost that BRUTUS dared Was the ghost of his "Caesar" unprepared, I'm sure I pity BRUTUS. I pass to critical seventeen: The ghost of that terrible wedding scene, When an elderly colonel stole my queen, And woke my dream of heaven: No school-girl decked in her nursery curls Was my gushing innocent queen of pearls; If she wasn't a girl of a thousand girls, She was one of forty-seven! I see the ghost of my first cigar-- Of the thence-arising family jar-- Of my maiden brief (I was at the bar), When I called the judge "Your wushup"! Of reckless days and reckless nights, With wrenched-off knockers, extinguished lights, Unholy songs, and tipsy fights, Which I strove in vain to hush up. Ghosts of fraudulent joint-stock banks, Ghosts of copy, "declined with thanks," Of novels returned in endless ranks, And thousands more, I suffer. The only line to fitly grace My humble tomb, when I've run my race, Is "Reader, this is the resting-place Of an unsuccessful duffer." I've fought them all, these ghosts of mine, But the weapons I've used are sighs and brine, And now that I'm nearly forty-nine, Old age is my only bogy; For my hair is thinning away at the crown, And the silver fights with the worn-out brown; And a general verdict sets me down As an irreclaimable fogy.