Lament For the Makers
The death of once-great swans I oft' lament;
and ask in vain, “Where have all the bards gone?”
No more are written lines as eloquent
as in the days of Poesy's ancient dawn,
when Homer sung the epic war for Troy,
and the odyssey of a Greek-hero king;
or, when the poet Petrarch sung for joy
of Laura, his love; and Dante, whose dayspring
of the heart was Beatrice. The Romantics
of bygone days, alas, are forgotten!
The lyric odes of Keats, the Byronics
of George Gordon, are now misbegotten
by great reams of abysmal, free-verse styles
today ill-writ by mental juveniles.
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