28
The Conservative
Edited by H.P. Lovecraft
The State of Poetry
By H. P. Lovecraft.
"Non bene junctarem discordia semina rerum" - Ovid.
Attend, ye modern bards, who dimly shine
As worthy scions of Mac Flecknoe's line!
Though scarce on Heliconian heights to gleam,
To one still clumsier ye supply a theme:
As meagre stalk from sterile garden climbs,
So springs my trash from your Boeotian rhymes.
In state establish'd on the Dunce's throne,
Hear infant Codrus with the colic moan.
His dreary wail no hint of sense conveys,
But critics hide their ignorance in praise.
Hard by the King, the pale-fac'd Raucus stands,
A ream of witless ballads in his hands.
Metre forgot, he screams his sickly song
In quatrains part too short and part too long.
But ere he stops, Agrestis fills the air
With dainty accents, and illusions rare.
How might wo praise the lines so soft and sweet,
Were they not lame in their poetic feet!
Just as the reader's heart bursts into flame,
The fire is quenched by rhyming "gain" with "name",
And ecstasy becomes no easy task
When fields of "grass" in Sol's bright radiance "bask"!
To Durus now our keen attention turns,
Whose rugged page with manly passion burns.
Would that his apt expressions did not lie
Where syllable and tone must go awry;
A lesser sentiment we needs must feel
If "re-al" love be mispronounced as "reel";
While far from his loose line we long to roam,
When statelu "po-em" masquerades as "pome"!
Next Hodiernus with his lyre appears,
And glads the modem critic's Midas-ears.
Upon his shelves neglected classics rest,
Whilst he reads Kipling, and proclaims him best.
The well-turn'd verse, the choice, harmonius phrase,
Are foreign to his new, corrupted ways.
Form is an error, elegance a crime,
To him who courts the plaudits of the time.
Ablest is he who can in rhyming reach
The lofty coarseness of a Cockney's speech.
No name we give to yon degen'rate swine
That apes the filthy Whitman's vulgar line.
