'A ticket for the lottery
I've purchased every week,' said she
'For years a score
Though desperately poor am I,
Oh how I,ve scrimped and scraped to buy
One chance more.
Each week I think I'll gain the prize
And end my sorrows and my sighs,
For I'll be rich;
Then nevermore I'll eat bread dry,
with icy hands to cry and cry
And stitch and stitch.'
'Tis true she won the premier prize;
It was of formidable size,
Ten million francs.
I know, because the man who sold
It to her splenetically told
He got no thanks.
The lucky one was never found,
For she was snugly underground,
And minus breath;
And with that ticket tucked away
In some old stocking, so they say,
She starved to death.
This poem by the popular canadian poet, Robert Service (1875-1958)
