My Tails

I haven't worn my evening dress
    For nearly twenty years;
Oh I'm unsocial, I confess,
    A hermit, it appears.
So much moth-balled it's but away,
    And though wee wifie wails,
Never unto my dimmest day
              I'll don my tails.

How slim and trim I looked in them,
    Though I was sixty old;
And now their sleekness I condemn
    To lie in rigid fold.
I have a portrait of myself
    Proud-printed in the Press,
In garb now doomed to wardrobe shelf,—
              My evening dress.

So let this be my last request,
    That when I come to die,
In tails I may be deftly drest,
    With white waistcoat and tie.
No, not for me a vulgar shroud
    My carcass to caress;—
Oh let me do my coffin proud
              In evening dress!