I Against Form
Whether my Lady will to hear of me
The unrimed speech wherein the heart is heard,
Or whether she prefer to the perfumed word
And powdered cheek of masking irony?
Decorous dance steps ape simplicity,
The well-groomed sonnet is to truth preferred;
Let us be all things so we’re not absurd,
Dabble with forms and damn the verity.
Bardlets and bardkins, I do bite my thumb.
Corset the muse and “directoire” her grace,
Marcel the elf-looks of sa chevelure,
Enamel Melpomene’s too sun-kissed face
And then to have your fame forged doubly sure
Let taste rule all and bid the heart be dumb.
II HIC JACET
When we be buried in anthologies,
Subjective egoists, objective makers
Tied cheek by jowl, the true and false partakers
Of semi-fame, and drear eternities
Warmed by no fire save scholastic comment,
Will those among us who have pleased ourselves
Not sit more snugly than the crabbed elves
Who made the work a trade, as if ’twere so meant?
And when the eyes we sing to are grown dim,
Think you we fellows who have loved our loving
Think you that we, who for their sake we’ve sung to,
Have jammed our words within the sonnet’s rim
And for love’s sake set all our lines a-moving,
Think you we’ll care what shelf the tomes are flung to?