The Old Fourposter
or the Frustrations of Modern Verse Now newly-posted, late-arrived, unknown, Each poet joins his regiment alone.
Strange buildings in the dark he then explores But cannot find the Quartermaster's Stores. Each room he enters yields no vacant bed . . All has been said before and better said.
First corners had first choice : the best they kept : Now, what they overlooked, he must accept. Only that obsolete fourposter there Still has its battered upper berth to spare. Its old right angles, flexible and weak, Are now askew, acute, obtuse, oblique. Elizabethans slept in this antique.
Where are the struts by which they used to climb ? (Blank verse is missing, so is rhyme.
Bright images, once used, how soon they fade, And secondhand is all his stock-in-trade !) Vault up as best you can. Aloft you stay. Blankets and straw may come another day. It may be shaky but it may not fall, You too in time will learn it all.
Ere now, strange fellows have the Muses wed Who come (like Sleep) despite a homely bed. They were no classics when they were not dead.
C. G. INGRAM.
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