No more! alas! completely gone,

No shadow of a trace is left,

And I have still to linger on,

Of your companionship bereft,

And fight the battle to the end,

As best I may with one less friend.

It seems a cruel stroke of Fate.

How eagerly I watched you grow!

How much I loved you; how elate

When other people came to know

On what I always had insisted—

That you in point of fact existed.

I played with you, who every day

Grew more responsive to my touch.

I stroked you in the gentlest way,

With sweet caresses. Ah! how much

We seemed, as though a child and mother,

To be bound up in one another.

You did appear to like me then,

No mere lip-service seemingly

Was that you rendered to me when

You never contradicted me,

But hung upon my words, though true

It also was they hung on you.

And then one day you disappeared,

Cut off in life's most sunny prime.

I missed you sadly as I feared

And thought I should do at the time.

Though now your image comes and plain

Grows on me sometimes once again.

Oh! my moustache! I did the deed,

I own it frankly, I alone.

I felt it (for it made me bleed),

Yet still you always must have known,

Though you were of proportions regal,

You hardly helped me to look legal.