Quixotic is his enterprise, and hopeless his adventure is, <br />Who seeks for jocularities that haven't yet been said. <br />The world has joked incessantly for over fifty centuries, <br />And every joke that's possible has long ago been made. <br />I started as a humorist with lots of mental fizziness, <br />But humour is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse; <br />For my stock-in-trade, my fixtures, and the goodwill of the <br />business <br />No reasonable offer I am likely to refuse. <br />And if anybody choose <br />He may circulate the news <br />That no reasonable offer I'm likely to refuse. <br /> <br />Oh happy was that humorist - the first that made a pun at all - <br />Who when a joke occurred to him, however poor and mean, <br />Was absolutely certain that it never had been done at all - <br />How popular at dinners must that humorist have been! <br /> <br />Oh the days when some stepfather for the query held a handle out, <br />The door-mat from the scraper, is it distant very far? <br />And when no one knew where Moses was when Aaron blew the candle <br />out, <br />And no one had discovered that a door could be a-jar! <br />But your modern hearers are <br />In their tastes particular, <br />And they sneer if you inform them that a door can be a-jar! <br /> <br />In search of quip and quiddity, I've sat all day, alone, apart - <br />And all that I could hit on as a problem was - to find <br />Analogy between a scrag of mutton and a Bony-part, <br />Which offers slight employment to the speculative mind: <br />For you cannot call it very good, however great your charity - <br />It's not the sort of humour that is greeted with a shout - <br />And I've come to the conclusion that my mine of jocularity <br />In present Anno Domini, is worked completely out! <br />Though the notion you may scout, <br />I can prove beyond a doubt <br />That my mine of jocularity is utterly worked out.<br /><br />William Schwenck Gilbert<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-played-out-humorist/
