Monday Morning

I often pause to contemplate
The sadly barren mental state
Of persons whom it is my fate
   To meet on Monday morning.
They should be, after Sunday's rest,
Alert, clear-minded, full of zest;
But everywhere they are oppressed,
   Bad-tempered, dull and yawning.

But I?  I'm always strangely bright,
Primed with ideas and full of fight,
With brain alert and eye alight
   With rare exhilaration:
All due, no doubt to my wise bent
To do no thing I should repent,
And to a Sunday wisely spent
   In pious contemplation.

I do not wish to set myself
Upon some loft moral shelf
And treat my brother man, poor elf,
   To haughty patronising.
And yet I feel I have to say
That I regard the laggard way
That men approach their work this day
   As utterly surprising.

Oh, I could write, this gladsome morn,
With vigor of a man new-born
Rare verses, full of lilting scorn
   About my fellow's failings;
Or I could write on politics
And heave a hundred verbal bricks,
Using the rhymster's thousand tricks
   In homilies and railings.

But I resist; for, being kind
I know that human nature's blind
And weak and frail; I have no mind
   To call down envious curses.
And, tho' I tremble on the verge,
I manfully resist the urge,
And sing, where I might shout and splurge,
   These rather halting verses.