Explore "To a Vers Librist" by Franklin P. Adams on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"Oh bard," I said, "your verse is free; / The shackles that encumber me, / The fetters that are my obsession, / Are never gyves to your expression.
"The fear of falsities in rhyme, / In metre, quantity, or time, / Is never yours; you sing along / Your unpremeditated song."
"Correct," the young vers librist said.
"Whatever pops into my head / I write, and have but one small fetter: / I start each line with a capital letter.
"But rhyme and metre -- Ishkebibble! -- / Are actually neglig_ib_le.
I go ahead, like all my school, / Without a single silly rule."
Of rhyme I am so reverential / He made me feel inconsequential.
I shed some strongly saline tears / For bards I loved in younger years.
"If Keats had fallen for your fluff,"
I said, "he might have done good stuff.
If Burns had thrown his rhymes away, / His songs might still be sung to-day."
O bards of rhyme and metre free, / My gratitude goes out to ye / For all your deathless lines -- ahem!
Let's see, now. What _is_ one of them?