Verses in Hades

Ah, those Classicists,
Those poets of antiquity !
They never faced the style fascists,
Never faced creative mists,
With lines that must engage in trysts –
They could keep it loose and gritty.
Rhythm, metre, drove their gist.
Their audience would ne’er insist
Their lines be docked and chimed and kissed;
How our plight they must so pity.
Sappho, Virgil, Homer, Horace
Never had to suffer this:
They never had their epic bliss
Reduced by form into a ditty.
Of all the literary crimes
Befallen us since ancient times,
I curse the most whoe’er invented rhymes.