The Conservative (Lovecraft)/October 1915/An Impartial Spectator

by H. P. Lovecraft

An Impartial Spectator

Mr. John Russell, the United's clever satirist, has composed the following lines concerning the controversy over regular metre lately waged through the pages of The Looking Glass, The Lake Breeze, and the Conservative:

Metrical Regularity;

Or, Broken Metre.

Dear Youth, if you would be a poet,
Pray study this, and see you know it:
With careful rhyme and one smooth metre,
Your poem can't but be much neater.
Should you prefer to rhyme in anapaest,
Convinc'd that such conveys your fancy best,
Change not the form, nor try heroic lines,
Howe'er your fleeting mood your pen inclines.
Just see that you hold to the same old refrain,
For if you change once, sure you'll change it again.
And the critics (confound them) will haughtily say
'Tis the worst thing they've seen for full many a day.
And now, in conclusion, pray shun the illusion
That all you've to do is to write:
If you study your rhymes; feet, metre and times,
You'll a masterpiece some day indite!

J.R.

While Mr. Russell's words seem to constitute a very keen thrust at the Conservative, his cleverly varied metre satirizes with equal keenness the other side of the discussion; wherefore he must be classified by means of that much abused hypothetical term, "neutral".