When the embalmer closed my eyes, And all the family went in black, And shipped me off to Paradise, I had no thought of coming back;
I dreamed of undisturbed repose Until the Judgment Day went crack, Tucked safely in from top to toes. “I've done my bit,” I said. “I've earned
The right to take things at my ease!” When folk declared the dead returned, I called it all tomfooleries. “They are too glad to get to bed,
To stretch their weary limbs in peace; Done with it all — the lucky dead!” But scarcely had I laid me down, When comes a voice: “Is that you, Joe?
I'm calling you from Williamstown! Knock once for‘ yes,’ and twice for‘ no.’” Then, hornet-mad, I knocked back two — The table shook, I banged it so —
“Not Joe!” they said, “Then tell us who? “We're waiting — is there no one here, No friend, you have a message for?” But I pretended not to hear.
“Perhaps he fell in the great war?” “Perhaps he's German?” someone said; “How goes it on the other shore?” “That's no way to address the dead!”
And so they talked, till I got sore, And made the blooming table rock, And ribald oaths and curses swore, And strange words guaranteed to shock.
“He's one of those queer spooks they call A poltergeist — the ghosts that mock, Throw things —” said one, who knew it all. “I wish an old thigh-bone was round
To break your silly head!” I knocked. “A humourist of the burial-ground!” A bright young college graduate mocked. Then a young girl fell in a trance,
And foamed: “Get out — we are deadlocked — And give some other ghost a chance!” Such was my first night in the tomb, Where soft sleep was to hold me fast;
I little knew my weary doom! It even makes a ghost aghast To think of all the years in store — The slave, as long as death shall last,
To ouija-boards forevermore. For morning, noon, and night they call! Alive, some fourteen hours a day I worked, but now I work them all.
No sooner down my head I lay, A lady writer knocks me up About a novel or a play, Nor gives me time for bite or sup.
I hear her damned typewriter click With all the things she says I say, You'd think the public would get sick; And that's my only hope — some day!
Then séances, each night in dozens I must attend, their parts to play For dead grandpas and distant cousins. O for my life to live again!
I'd know far better than to die; You'd never hear me once complain, Could I but see the good old sky, For here they work me to the bone;
“Rest!” — do n't believe it! Well, good-by! That's Patience Worth there on the phone!
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