BOUND VERSE

     Why write in rhyme and meter anymore,
     When poets nowadays have left behind
     Such labored artifice from days of yore
     As too contrived and rigidly designed?

     “Let’s set verse free from its antique confines
     And make it new, inventing different modes;
     New bottles should be found to hold new wines,
     New pathways to replace the ancient roads.”

     So said the likes of Eliot and Pound,
     Rejecting the Victorian regime;
     I’d argue, though, their reasoning was unsound
     Denying what prior eras all esteem:

          The heartbeat of such verse is metered time;
          It’s soul, the much-anticipated rhyme.

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