An Involuntary Elegy
An Involuntary Elegy is a anonymous poem published in The St. James's Gazette on 16 december 1893.
The poem was a reaction to the "death" of Sherlock Holmes in the Arthur Conan Doyle's short story : The Adventure of the Final Problem (1893).
An Involuntary Elegy
(In Memory of Sherlock Holmes.)
So at the last he yields to Fate,
And we lament a vanished friend,
Through thrilling pages that narrate
The history of his tragic end.
Who solved with monthly stratagems,
To win imaginary thanks,
Mysteries of pilfered diadems,
And gunshot wounds and plundered banks.
Our recollection wanders o'er
Black villainies by sea and land,
The Pair of Ears, the Sign of Four,
The Twisted Lip, the Speckled Band.
And through them all that visage pale,
Those hawk-like eyes, alert and bright,
That subtle wit that could not fail,
Those theories that were always right.
Fare you, poor played-out fancy, well,
We know you were absurd, untrue,
Yet have we met, we blush to tell,
Heroes who bored us more than you.
Farewell the modern novel's path
Is pointing to a deeper Art,
And such a serious humour hath
No place for your sensationnal part.
Yet, when we grapple with such tomes,
In leisure hours on sunny lawns,
Perchance your memory, Sherlock Holmes,
May lend a fervour to our yawns.
