The Song of the Waste-Paper Basket

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O BARD of fortune, you deem me nought
  But a mark for your careless scorn.
For I am the echo-less grave of thought
  That is strangled before it’s born.
You think perchance that I am a doom
  Which only a dunce should dread—
Nor dream I’ve been the dishonoured tomb
  Of the noblest and brightest dead.

The brightest fancies that e’er can fly
  From the labouring minds of men
Are often written in lines awry,
  And marred by a blundering pen;
And thus it comes that I gain a part
  Of what to the world is loss—
Of genius lost for the want of art,
  Of pearls that are set in dross.

And though I am of a lowly birth
  My fame has been cheaply bought,
A power am I, for I rob the earth
  Of the brightest gems of thought;
The Press gains much of my lawful share,
  I am wronged without redress—
But I have revenge, for I think it fair
  That I should plunder the Press.

You’d pause in wonder to read behind
  The lines of some songs I see;
The soul of the singer I often find
  In songs that are thrown to me.
But the song of the singer I bury deep
  With the scrawl of the dunce and clown,
And both from the eyes of the world I keep,
  And the hopes of both I drown.

© Henry Lawson