From Phyllis McGinley’s On the Contrary.

Melancholy Reflections After a Lost Argument

I always pay the verbal score
 With wit, concise, selective.
I have an apt and ample store
 Of ladylike invective.

My mots, retorts, and quips of speech,
 Hilarious or solemn,
Placed end to end, no doubt, would reach
 To any gossip column.

But what avails the epigram,
 The clever and the clear shot,
Invented chiefly when I am
 The only one in earshot?

And where’s the good of repartee
 To quell a hostile laughter,
That tardily occurs to me
 A half an hour after?

God rest you merry, gentlemen,
 Who nastily have caught
The art of always striking when
 The irony is hot.