Us Poets

Wordsworth wrote some tawdry stuff;
Much of Moore I have forgotten;
Parts of Tennyson are guff;
Bits of Byron, too, are rotten.
All of Browning isn't great;
There are slipshod lines in Shelley;
Everyone knows Homer's fate;
Some of Keats in vermicelli.
Sometimes Shakespeare hit the slide,
Not to mention Pope or Milton;
Some of Southey's stuff is snide.
Some of Spenser's simply Stilton.
When one has to boil the pot,
One can't always watch the kettle.
You may credit it or not-
Now and then I slump a little!

'From "Tobogganing on Parnassus," Doubleday, Page and Company, 1912.