The man who always has too much to say

Is ever a troublesome thing,

But just how words can undo a man,

That is the tale I sing:

Christopher Page was born with a gift

For endless argument,

Which put that loquacious personage

In trouble wherever he went.

Given a subject on which he could differ

He'd talk the clock around

And beat his opponent in any debate

In smothering waves of sound.

It was not what he said, but the number of times

He could say the identical thing

With a different expression, inflection, or turn,

Or special rhetorical fling.

He boasted himself of the number of times

He'd said every word in the tongue,

Till the good souls who heard this Christopher Page

Wished devoutly that he could be hung.

But the people who said that- how little they knew!

What a sad death the talker would die.

You may tell of a grocer who died from his food,

Or a baker from blueberry pie,

Of a writer gone crazy from too many books,

Or a barkeeper ruined by drink,

But to tell of an orator killed by a word

Is to add to the chain a new link.

Now when Christopher Page was half through his life

He began to develop a craze-

A sort of a sideline on just simply talk,

That brought on a change in his ways.

He kept for his tirades and outbursts of spleen

An address entirely satirical;

For thoughts on religion, words noble and grave,

And for poetry, daintily lyrical.

A misapplied word gave him actual pain,

So far he developed his passion,

And from being a fountain of plenteous talk

He chose all his words for their fashion.

He discoursed in pure Latin or Saxon or Greek

Whenever occasion required it.

He'd always an elegant speech in his head

And with half a suggestion, he fired it.

He'd only have round him perfection in speech;

Couldn't stand a grammatical error.

His directions to servants were always the same:

To reflect in himself as a mirror.

But his end came in this way: a flippant assistant

Altogether too cheerful and gay,

When questioned concerning the stake of the weather

Said, "I'll see how the land lays"--and then

Poor Christopher Page grew purple with rage,

Apoplectically flushing so red

At this serious sin, that he gurgled and died

From a rush of the blood to the head.

and now he reclines on that billowy cloud

Where grammarians go when they die,

Where only the silver-tongued orators speak

And do not say lay when they lie.