You who have lived in the land,
You who have trusted the trail,
You who are strong to withstand,
You who are swift to assail:

How I rose with Murdoch’s Sun
And soared with News of the World
And sought America for fun,
All my flags unfurled.

Little mirth by day or nights,
Though you Yanks treated me well,
Then I fell into my fights
Against the Bill of Rights.

I took this feud onto the air
Most every blooming show
No more royalist a Brit than I
Ere had dragged the scroll so low.

Would had I but quelled my rage
And stifled my resentments
(It ill befit a man my age)
At the Second of your Amendments.

Oh, I’d have adjusted — perhaps
If only I’d the wit to see
That my ratings would collapse
And America would turn on me.

How painful is the humiliation
And worth recounting but
T’was I, not the Rifle Association,
That shot me in the foot.

________

*With apologies to Robert W. Service,
from whose own ‘L’Envoi’
the above first stanza is borrowed.