Ogden Nash

O Duty,
Why hast thou not the visage of a sweetie or a cutie?
Why displayest thou the countenance of the kind of conscientious organizing spinster
That the minute you see her you are aginster?
Why glitter thy spectables so ominously?
Why are thou clad so abominously?
Why art thou so different from Venus
And why do thou and I have so few interests mutually in common between us?
Why art thou fifty per cent. martyr
And fifty-one per cent. Tartar?

Ogden Nash, beginning of “Kind of an Ode to Duty” (1935), collected in I’m a Stranger Here Myself (1938).