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When moderns say that rhythm’s passed,
…And rhyming verse is trite,
What would the great Longfellow say
…About that arrow’s flight?
Such talk is like an acid rain
…That falls on Dickinson,
And kills her bees and Kilmer’s trees;
…Coats Kipling’s dawning sun.
That dart is thrown at Shakespeare, too
…And all the masters past
By men who pose as poets when
…It’s prose their work is classed.
And so I’ll stand as close I can
…To Byron, Coleridge, Keats
I’ll hold their hats or open doors
…Or drive them through the streets.
And I’ll not care when prose lines up
…In stanzas in pretense,
Or critics cough or prosers scorn
…And publishers fold tents.
I cannot ever bothered be
…When men my verse oppose.
They praise the naked emperor,
…And criticize my clothes.
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photo by Jay Simmons at
http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/nrcQGOi/landscape
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© Dennis Allen Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2018.
The Bard on the Hill 
Yes indeed. I like some of the early modern poetry (those guys could write formalist poetry as well) but the postmodern stuff is rubbish – a con-job as you point out, but the herd has gone along with it.
Sadly, they have.
Wish I could give this two likes! I first fell in love with poetry through reading Tennyson and Wordsworth. (I like to sneak rhyme into my poetry by placing it in the middle of the lines.)
Sorry that I delayed in answer this. I saw it and it slipped away for a couple of reason. But thanks. Glad you liked it. Maybe WordPress needs more than a like, a heart for “love it” like Facebook has. 🙂 One reason it slipped away was I thought I’d leave an example of my use of internal rhyme in a line since you like to “sneak rhyme” into your poetry that way. I think it gives a line an extra “zing”. Anyway, here’s one. I think it has an internal rhyme in one verse of each stanza. The first three, I think, have it in the 5th line. https://thebardonthehill.wordpress.com/2014/09/01/the-county-line-by-dennis-lange/
Lovely, lyrical and truthful lines.
I love your New England poetic perspectives.
Thank you.