“O'er the wires the electric message came,
"He is no better; he is much the same."”

— Alfred Austin

On the Illness of the Prince of Wales (1910)

An 1871 poem on the illness of the Prince of Wales, although there is some doubt that Austin actually wrote this part. That classic compendium "The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse" (2d ed. 1930; Capricorn paperback 1962) includes a dozen quotations from Austin but attributes this particular couplet (p. 17) to a "university poet unknown." It also provides a metrically more accurate first line, "Across the wires the gloomy message came," plus "not" for "no" in the second line.
On the Illness of the Prince of Wales (1910)

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Alfred Austin 56

British writer and poet 1835–1913

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