Suppose he'd listened to the erudite committee, He would have only found where not to look; Suppose his terrier when he whistled had obeyed, It would not have unearthed the buried city; Suppose he had dismissed the careless maid, The cryptogram would not have fluttered from the book. "It was not I," he cried as, healthy and astounded, He stepped across a predecessor's skull; "A nonsense jingle simply came into my head And left the intellectual Sphinx dumbfounded; I won the Queen because my hair was red; The terrible adventure is a little dull." Hence Failure's torment: "Was I doomed in any case, Or would I not have failed had I believed in Grace?"
