Very Bad Poetry by Kathryn Petras Read Free Book Online Page B

clever creature.…
   Her ideas are divine upon Art, upon Nature.…
I no more am found worthy to join in the talk, now:
   While she leads our poetical friend up the walk, now.
    Meanwhile there is dancing in yonder green bower
   A swarm of young midges. They dance high and low.
’Tis a sweet little species that lives but one hour,
   And the eldest was born half an hour ago.
    One impulsive young midge I hear ardently pouring
   In the ears of a shy wanton in gauze.…
His passion is not, he declares, the mere fever
   Of a rapturous moment. It knows no control:
It will burn in his breast through existence forever,
   Immutably fixed in the deeps of the soul!
    She wavers: she flutters: … male midges are fickle:
   Dare she trust him her future? … she asks with a sigh:
He implores, … and a tear is beginning to trickle:
   She is weak: they embrace, and … the lovers pass by.
    While they pass me, down here on a rose leaf has lighted
   A pale midge, his feelers all drooping and torn:
His existence is withered; its future is blighted:
   His hopes are betrayed: and his breast is forlorn.
    By the midge his heart trusted his heart is deceived, now
   In the virtue of midges no longer he believes.…
His friends would console him … life is yet before him;
   Many hundred long seconds he still has to live:
    There is Fame! There’s Ambition! and grander than either,
   There is freedom! … and the progress and march of the race!…
But to Freedom his breast beats no longer, and neither
   Ambition nor action her loss can replace.
    If the time had been spent in acquiring aesthetics
   I have squandered in learning the language of midges,
There might, for my friend in her peripatetics,
   Have been now
two
asses to help her o’er the bridges.
    As it is … I’ll report to her the whole conversation.
   It would have been longer; but somehow or other
(In the midst of that misanthrope’s long lamentation)
   A midge in my right eye became a young mother.
    Since my friend is so clever, I’ll ask her to tell me
   Why the least living thing (a mere midge in the egg!)
Can make a man’s tears flow, as it now befell me.…
   O you dear clever young woman, explain it, I beg!
    The Worst Attempts at Rhymes By Very Bad Poets
    T he intrepid very bad poet doesn’t let something as simple as not having the right word in mind get in his or her way. Sometimes a bad poet stretches so hard for a rhyme that we as readers are forced to do a little stretching on our own, as in the following prime examples of truly creative attempts at rhyming.
    from
In a Book-store

by
Francis Saltus Saltus
    Sad, on Broadway next afternoon,
   I strolled in listless manner,
Humming her most detested tune,
   And smoking an Havana.
    from
The Light-Bearer of Liberty

by
J. W. Scholl
    Gooing babies, helpless pygmies,
Who shall solve your Fate’s enigmas?
    from
Indian Corn

by
Rev. William Cook
    Corn, corn, sweet Indian corn,
   Greenly you grew long ago.
Indian fields well to adorn,
   And to parch or grind hah-ho!

JAMES MILLIGAN
(fl. 1800s)
    L ittle is known of the poet, save his obvious love of geology.
from
The Science of Geology
    In ages past [animals] lived and died,
And afterwards were petrified
By enclosure in massive rocks,
And thus became fossilised blocks.
The oldest-known rocks contain lime,
Thus proving at that remote time
Animal life did then abound,
Which may fill us with thought profound.

BERTHA MOORE
(fl. 1890s)
    N ot much is known about Bertha Moore except that she flourished in Victorian England. Her baby talk poem is not unique; this genre was extremely popular at the end of the last century. The modern discoverer of Moore’s baby talk verse found it in Ernest Pertwee’s
The Reciter’s Second Treasury of Verse,
following, of all things, Adam’s morning hymn from Milton’s
Paradise Lost.
A Child’s Thought
    If I were God, up in the