Ragged
This sketching-pad was once a shirt,
This watermark a tablecloth –
The threadbare rags of moth
Shall live again.
As paper of the better sort,
Quite fit for constitutions,
And for banknote distributions –
It’s in the grain.
Yet when the papers bear the news,
The ‘rags’ are from the gutter press –
This label calls them worthless
In one gulp.
Strange, how the insult goes,
Yet fittingly, it also lied –
We’ll find no cotton pride
Within their pulp.
Rhyming Couplets 