Explore "To Certain Poets" by Joyce Kilmer on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Now is the rhymer's honest trade / A thing for scornful laughter made.
The merchant's sneer, the clerk's disdain, / These are the burden of our pain.
Because of you did this befall, / You brought this shame upon us all.
You little poets mincing there / With women's hearts and women's hair!
How sick Dan Chaucer's ghost must be / To hear you lisp of "Poesie"!
A heavy-handed blow, I think, / Would make your veins drip scented ink.
You strut and smirk your little while / So mildly, delicately vile!
Your tiny voices mock God's wrath, / You snails that crawl along His path!
Why, what has God or man to do / With wet, amorphous things like you?
This thing alone you have achieved: / Because of you, it is believed
That all who earn their bread by rhyme / Are like yourselves, exuding slime.
Oh, cease to write, for very shame, / Ere all men spit upon our name!
Take up your needles, drop your pen, / And leave the poet's craft to men!