[Roger Slater]

I wrote this for a Speccie last March. It didn't win then, but I might try it one more time since John and Bill won, so can't reuse theirs. I'm not that hopeful, though, since it didn't even get me an HM. Frank got an HM, so maybe he'll win outright this time.

TO BE, OR NOT TO BE
W.S. Gilbert

I am the very model of an indecisive Danish bloke.
I can't decide if I should live or end my life with just one stroke.
I wonder, is it nobler in the mind to suffer fortune's slings?
The problem is, nobody knows the consequence that dying brings.
If death were just an end to pain and heartache and a thousand shocks
you wouldn't see me hesitate to lie down in a plain pine box.
The rub may be the pain of life is better than what dreams may come,
enough to make a suicide in retrospect feel awfully dumb.
For otherwise who'd bear the whips and scorns of time, the law's delay,
and who would bear a fardel when we all know how much fardels weigh?
The native hue of resolution's sicklied o'er with casts of thought.
It's time to put away my knife until my father's killer's caught.
But was it just a fantasy, the words my father's phantom spoke?
I am the very model of an indecisive Danish bloke.