Trial of "Free Verse," as it is called.

I fling aside
All scruple
To delve into the wondrous
Fad of modern poets.
Free verse, I mean, by name.
So free
That if I wished
I could send it soaring
High as the sky
Then bring it crashing
down.
Throw it wildly across an elongated space of nothingness
Or not.

It is my own,
My toy, my liberated verse.
To think of this as poetry
Is novelty
to me.
But temptation reared its giant lure;
I could not resist,
And here I am to try
That elevated type of verse
In the glorious realm of all poetry,
One small outlet
Into which most poets cast themselves today.

I find here
Perhaps too little constraint,
Too little form to please my reader's ear,
Too little rhythm
To soften,
Too little rhyme
To charm.
You see how even now
I turn to rhythm and its grace,
Majestic beauty, stately calm,
And syncopated art.

But "I mustn't be too harsh"
On a poet's new-fangled style.
No, let it free!
I cry to myself.
Don't think of rhythm and rhyme
Or form.
Cast all restraint to the four
awaiting winds,
And fly!

...

Fly with what?
I have cast off the wings
That led me to beauty's height
Of yore.
I have cut off the feet
That allowed me to run,
To gallantly gallop a barren plain
And grace it with a rhyme's refrain.

And what fetters I now find,
Clasping my hands from a poet's art,
Clasping my heart!

For were I to be true
To this intimidating new style,
I may not touch the thing called rhythm
And I am barred from all rhyme.

My form
Is free!
It may run as it pleases
With no consistent
Thought or backward glance.

Is this my masterpiece?
I suppose it must be,
In our day.
Reflecting how our poetry books
Hold nothing but this style,
This liberated, freed, equalified –– poetry?

Oh, I am ashamed of all of you
To limit thus your Muse!
When rhyme and rhythm, tried and true,
Are there for you to use.

Come, come, awake! Reform today
And set those fetters free;
Begin to write the novel way
That always used to be.

Come, show you've talent, show you've wit,
In a poet's honest verse,
And never scruple, trying it,
That you have met the worse.

When you have rhythm in your hand
To sprinkle well and through,
You'll find the game a splendor, and
The mystery quite new.

I feel that I must warn you though ––
And justly do I tell ––
When every crook and cran you know,
It holds a mighty spell.

You will not WANT to set it free,
Exploring empty verse,
To send away your weaponry
In some depressing hearse.

You're truly free to jump about
Or sluggishly spend time
Within a verse, –– to whisper, SHOUT!
Ha, ha! 'Tis splendid, rhyme.

And that's the end
For those who failed to notice.

~