A Classicist’s Lament

Though once a slave before tradition's throne,The poet now need please himself alone.No more by patient toil, as Horace schools,He serves a stern apprenticeship to rules.A youth, new bitten by the flea to write,Can scratch himself to poet overnight!Pebbles that lurk beneath the self's dark seaCan win acclaim as pearls of poetry,Provided that the ropes on which they're strungAre twisted dreams by Freud or myths by Jung;For, like high priests whose revenue dependsUpon a lore no layman comprehends,The modern critic gives his best reviewsTo work that's esoteric and abstruse,And should it prove too dense (like courtier boldWho praised the king's new clothes in fable old)Boldly he'll vaunt the poem's well-cut shapeAnd trace rich patterns where the public gape...

Oh, for an honest child to cry hallooFor naked truths that Burke and Johnson knew,Or another Pope from TwickenhamTo drop clean acid from a poisoned pen.