When I am dead, with blood ice-cold,
and my poor rhymes remain unsold,
please bundle up this hard-won verse,
(the fruits of some creative curse.)
And all I\'ve writ, I bid you burn.
Feed to the flames, since it won\'t earn
you squat, and even if it should,
I\'d still believe I\'d conjured crud.
But \'fore you turn my lines to ash,
at least for pity, if not cash,
peruse my poems, don\'t forget
the pain I poured: the blood, the sweat!
Go to my garret\'s graveyard gloom,
inside my invalidic room.
Snatch sacks of stanzas, stacked so neat,
five metres high - was no mean feat.
Unwrap and read a few - all through
(If you can spare an hour or two.)
You\'ll see how stubbornly I spent
my life on rhyme: I was Hell-Bent!