ON ELIA'S TRASH BIN

It has been a while since I read it, I admit;

Still, I’m fairly certain that Charles Lamb,

When he wrote his great essay on retirement,

“”The Superannuated Man,” did not say a word

About standing in the rain scrubbing a trash bin

With chlorine bleach.

                                                He must have had a bin.

Did his sister Mary clean it? Or, perhaps,

When his friends – Keats and Coleridge,

Hazlitt and De Quincy and Jem White –

Grew worn from too much wine and wit

They picked up the rags and soapy water

And set to.