Mortgaged

These spotted trousers, now too short, Were once some verses smoothly wrought, The worn-out bluchers on my feet Twin sonnets to My Lady Sweet, This 'decker' hanging round my nose The product of an ODE TO ROSE; The collar, tie and underpants Are still an editor's advance For some wild Bacchanalian song The gods, I hope, will send along... To work a dead horse off one's hand (More so, of Pegasus's brand) Is what a poet hates to do, Yet still is what Fate drives us to. Ah me, I feel my soul is ripe For forty couplets' worth of tripe, Three lines of beer, a verse of bread, But O ... I'll have to pay instead That d___d old Editor!!