Classic Poem

What, in the Register of Doom, is writ
In that one fateful entry under B?
What say the Angels of the Book, who sit
Recording good and ill relentlessly?
Alas! No saintly guerdon I foresee;
I've no pretension to apotheosis;
But when I pass, may this be said of me:
" He made no reference to halitosis. "

Since early youth I longed to be a wit
And gain a name for charming jeux d'esprit ,
And many a dreadful joke would I commit,
Turning on subjects like the female knee,
The stinginess of Scots, the repartee
Of colored men pursued by " ha'nts " and " ghos'es. "
Yea, I have sinned; but of one sin I'm free;
I've made no reference to halitosis.

Great are my sins; for once I wrote a skit
On missionaries in a fricassee.
Must I tell all? I've even tried to twit
Girls walking homeward o'er the midnight lea.
Gibes, to send shudders down the vertebrae,
I've made about the Bolshevik neurosis.
Oh, mercy, mercy! This my only plea —
I've made no reference to halitosis!

Angel, you smile; you grant no benefit
For the one virtue of my diagnosis;
You write the lines that plunge me in the pit —
I've made this reference to halitosis!