JOST A MON

I'm going to write a Ballade in irregular metre
Having been asked to write one suddenly as we go to press
To put it into ordinary rhythm might have been neater
But would have had to disadvantages which I will now express:
The first is that Thought loses freedom under stress
Of rules, dogmas, and everything of that sort of race
And the second is one that you can very easily guess
Whatever else this Ballade is, it is not commonplace.

One of the oldest titles in the English Peerage is the title of Lord Petre
One of those who held it in the reign of Queen Bess
(An honest man in his way, but a bit of a bleater,
And always hedging on the religious question, more or less)
Wrote in regard to poets : "They have hardiesse ...
To putte our old Englishe tongue out of face."
It is obvious that this nobleman was blind 
      to his countrymen's contemporary inventiveness.
Whatever else this Ballade is, it is not commonplace.

Even as it is, however, I have difficulty in finding more rhythms in -etre
And still more diffficulty in finding any really suitable rhymes in -ess ;
It would seem irrelevant to say that I should like a little 12 h.p. two-seater
And equally irrelevant to remark that I doubt whether human societies progress
Simple as my scheme is it is already getting into a sort of mess
From which I can hardly extricate it with any tolerable grace
My misadventure should be a lesson to all against all irregularities and excess
Whatever else this Ballade is, it is not commonplace.

ENVOI

Prince, if - with your usual crudity and lack of tact and address -
You blurt out the plain question whether I have written in this 
           extraordinary fashion solely to fill up space,
I answer with that brutal cynicism which has come up on with advancing years: 'Yes!'
Whatever else this Ballade is, it is not commonplace.
                                                             - Anonymous (I think)