Modern Verse

Composed during a walk to the lake with our two daughters and Jack Russell terriers. August 2015, SW France.

It sometimes seems to me

That English verse

In modern hands of true felicity

May actually end up worse

Now rhyme and metre

Are head-butted from their perch

And music rare

Is not the poet’s search

How sweet the limpid songs

Of bards of old

The verse they now call free

Was dearly sold

For I have seen the emperor’s new clothes

And every stitch I reckon to be prose.