Louis Untermeyer’s “End of the Comedy” was first published in Poetry (May 1919). Amy Lowell, with whom Untermeyer shared a close friendship, wrote about his work in her New York Times article, “Louis Untermeyer: Critic, Parodist, Poet” (October 10, 1920): “Louis Untermeyer is in love with life, and life is his Ark of the Covenant: its laws are a new Tables of Stone to him, its ministering priests are all humanity. But if he sees this consciously at all, it is certainly not through the opal-tinted veil of mysticism; his attitude toward the universe is one of robust and delighting faith in happy confidence, he worships the symbols he knows, and believes beyond them, with no torturing desire to penetrate and prove.” She continues, “Poem after poem turns itself around with a laugh at the end, as though shyly afraid of what it has said. [...] [T]here are [poems] scattered through the collection which stand out all the better for their setting[,] ‘End of the Comedy’ with the splendid final picture.”