Till she died in Charleston of childbed fever Before her looks or his heart could leave her. It took the flavor out of his drinking And left him thoughts he didn’t like thinking, So he wrapped his child in the dead girl’s shawl And sent her politely to Uncle Paul With a black-edged note full of grief and scruples And half the money he owed his pupils, Saw that Sue had the finest hearse That I. O. U.’s could possibly drape her And elegized her in vile French verse While his hot tears spotted the borrowed paper.

He still had manners, he tried to recover, But something went when he buried his lover. No women with eyes could ever scold him But he would make places too hot to hold him, He shrugged his shoulders and kept descending⁠— Life was a farce, but it needed ending. The tag-line found him too tired to dread it And he died as he lived, with an air, on credit, In his host’s best shirt and a Richmond garret, Talking to shadows and drinking claret.