Rejoinders 01

O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,

    Missing so much and so much?

O fat white woman whom nobody loves,

    Why do you walk through the fields in gloves . . . ?  

—Frances Cornford 

Why do you flash through the flowery meads,
Fat-head poet that nobody reads . . . ?
—G. K. Chesterton

O why do you walk through the fields in boots,

       Missing so much and so much?

O fat white woman whom nobody shoots,

Why do you walk through the fields in boots,

When the grass is soft as the breast of coots

       And shivering-sweet to the touch?

—Housman

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My candle burns at both ends;
     It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
     It gives a lovely light!
—Edna St. Vincent Millay First Fig, 1920 .

I burned my candle at both ends,
And now I have neither foes nor friends;
For all the lovely light begotten,
I'm paying now in feeling rotten.
—Samuel Hoffenstein