BALLADE OF BAD VERSES

Published in the Granta

Cambridge University, Cambridge, England

30 April 1898

(page 271)

There be songs of surrender and sighing,

Of sentiment noble and just,

Of lovers deserted and dying,

Of langour and lilies and lust.

There be visions of when we are dust;

 There be sonnets and rondels enough

To break the terrestrial crust—

  Lord, keep us from reading the stuff!

When Ajax, the lightning defying,

Was rude, his impertinent bust

Was shattered. The Editor, trying

To write (as an Editor must

Though his faculties rapidly rust)

Will speak in a manner that’s rough:

“You poets deserve to be trussed!

Lord, keep us from reading the stuff!”

My own little scheme of supplying

With fuel the realms of the cussed

Is to stoke all the fires with the flying

MSS blown that way by a gus

Of wind, which I honestly trust

Will be quick and flamboyant and bluff

And leave me to satisfy Fust:—^[1]

Lord, keep us from reading the stuff!

L’ENVOI

Prince Printer, in wait you are lying

For copy, and I’m in a huff.

You see even me versifying—

Lord, keep us from reading the stuff!

1—R. Browning’s Works, vol. xvi. A pet name for Mr. Spalding.