XCV
Don December 31st, 2009
XCV
Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.” I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”
John Skelton was an early Sixteenth-Century English poet whose lines are, in some people’s eyes, so bad that they’re good. He gave his name to the form: iambic dimeter rhyming AAAAA etc. as long as you can keep it up, then switching to B for as long as that will go, etc. Skeltonics aren’t the right form for many things, but they work well for some kinds of light verse, and also seem strangely appropriate for any phenomenon that just keeps coming back like a Skeltonic rhyme, er, bad penny.
A Skeltonic Upon Sanctification
When in did ride
My foolish pride,
I vainly tried
To run and hide;
But God espied
It, mortified
It, so it died,
Until again
It rose. So men
Do ever sin.
But God, to win
Them to come in
And save their skin
From burning Hell
Doth in them dwell
And sweetly tell
How from the well
Of Jesus’ blood
A crimson flood
Did drown the Tree
At Calvary
To purchase me
That I might be
Forever free
His slave to be.
Then Godly fear
And holy cheer
Did drive out sin
Until again
Straight in did ride
My foolish pride,
I vainly tried
To run and hide;
But God espied
It, mortified
It, so it died,
Until again . . .
(This poem, my friend,
Will never end
‘Til Christ comes back,
And that’s a fact!)
Donald T. Williams, PhD