O Metaphasia, peerless maid, How can I fitly sing The priceless decorative aid To dialogue you bring, Enabling serious folk, whose brains Are commonplace and crude, To soar to unimagined planes Of sweet ineptitude. Changed by your magic, common sense Nonsensical appears, And stars of sober influence Shoot madly from their spheres. You lure us from the beaten track, From minding P.’s and Q.’s, To paths where white is always black And pies resemble pews. Strange beasts, more strange than the giraffe, You conjure up to view, The flue-box and the forking-calf, Unknown at any Zoo; And new vocations you unfold, Wonder on wonder heaping, Hell-banging for the overbold, And toffee-cavern keeping. With you we hatch the pasty snipe, And all undaunted face Huge fish of unfamiliar type— Bush-pike and bubble-dace; Or, fired by hopes of lyric fame, We deviate from prose, And make it our especial aim Bun-sonnets to compose. I wonder did the ancients prove Responsive to your spell, Or, riveted to Reason’s groove, Against your charms rebel. And yet some senator obese, In Rome long years ago, May have misnamed a masterpiece _De Gallo bellico_. We know there were heroic men Ere AGAMEMNON’S days, Who passed forgotten from our ken, Lacking a poet’s praise; But, though great Metaphasiarchs Have doubtless flourished sooner, I’m sure their raciest remarks Have been eclipsed by S*****r. BALLADE OF FREE VERSE Up to the end of the great QUEEN’S reign Pegasus proved a tractable steed; Verse was metrical, mostly sane; “Fleshly” singers who wished to exceed Seldom, however great was their need, Held that prosody was a crime. Critics were one and all agreed: “Poets will never abandon rhyme.” Now, inspired by a high disdain, Grudging the past its rightful meed, Georgian minstrels, might and main, Urge that verse must be wholly freed Now and for ever from rules that lead Singers in chains to a jingling chime, Slaves of the obscurantist screed: “Poets will never abandon rhyme.” MILTON and TENNYSON give them pain; MARINETTI’S the man they heed, Grim apostle of stress and strain, Noise, machinery, smell and speed. Yet the best of the British breed, Fighters who sing ’mid blood and grime, Lend new force to the ancient rede: “Poets will never abandon rhyme.” ENVOY Prince, _vers libre_ is a noxious weed; Verse that is blank _may_ be sublime; Still, in spite of the Georgian creed, Poets will never abandon rhyme. THE STRIFE OF TONGUES (_Lines suggested by the recent demise of the inventor of Esperanto_.) As a patriotic Briton I am naturally smitten With disgust When some universal lingo By a zealous anti-Jingo Is discussed.