A Very Congruous Post

Over my vacation I found myself thinking about a recurrent amusement of mine: the English language contains words which have the appearance of being the negation of another word (due to the many such negatory prefixes which exist in English), and yet those oppositely-meaning words don't seem to exist. Everyone knows the opposite of “unhappy” is “happy,” but is the opposite of “disgruntled,” “gruntled?”

(P. G. Wodehouse played on this exact incongruity in his novel The Code of the Woosters, writing: “If not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.” [Also I thought I was being clever with “congruous” in the title of the post, but it turns that actually is a word.  How congruous.])

While searching on the subject, I encountered a funny poem by one J. H. Parker, apparently dating to at least 1953 (though I couldn't find out much else about it), which I consider to say much more on the subject, and better, than I could, and which I reproduce below:

A Very Descript Man .... J H Parker

I am such a dolent man,
I eptly work each day;
My acts are all becilic,
I've just ane things to say.

⁂

My nerves are strung, my hair is kempt,
I'm gusting and I'm span:
I look with dain on everyone
And am a pudent man.

⁂

I travel cognito and make
A delible impression:
I overcome a slight chalance,
With gruntled self-possession.

⁂

My dignation would be great
If I should digent be:
I trust my vagance will bring
An astrous life for me.

I must admit, I'm still trying to figure out what “span” in the second verse is meant to be the opposite of even after searching my Unix dictionary file with regular expressions, so if you have an idea please leave a comment and let me know! A hui hou!