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Read more poems by Robert Service: Robert Service Poems at Poetry X.

I haven't worn my evening dress
     For nearly twenty years;
Oh I'm unsocial, I confess,
     A hermit, it appears.
So much moth-balled it's but away,
     And though wee wifie wails,
Never unto my dimmest day
               I'll don my tails.

How slim and trim I looked in them,
     Though I was sixty old;
And now their sleekness I condemn
     To lie in rigid fold.
I have a portrait of myself
     Proud-printed in the Press,
In garb now doomed to wardrobe shelf,--
               My evening dress.

So let this be my last request,
     That when I come to die,
In tails I may be deftly drest,
     With white waistcoat and tie.
No, not for me a vulgar shroud
     My carcass to caress;--
Oh let me do my coffin proud
               In evening dress!

Added: 29 Jun 2002 | Last Read: 4 Sep 2026 3:35 AM | Viewed: 4410 times

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