Lines on a Typewriter

You glory in your typewriter,
And its virtues you rehearse,
But we prefer the old inditer,
For to write either prose or verse.

And let each man work his will,
But never never do abuse
The ancient and glorious quill
From the wing of a fine old goose.

Where this text comes from

First published in Musings on the Banks of Canadian Thames (1884). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-20.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/james-mcintyre_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (3)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L8.

Cite this poem

James McIntyre (1828?–1906). “Lines on a Typewriter.” First published in Musings on the Banks of Canadian Thames (1884). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/james-mcintyre/lines-on-a-typewriter/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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