A Rhymer To Them Is A Poetaster Poem by Francis Duggan

You highly educated University Professors you may boast of your literary degrees
You try to tell us what is or is not poetry enough of your rhetoric please
You tried your best for to kill off rhyme at least you gave it your best try
But no thanks to you rhyme is still living and it just refuses to die.

You cannot kill off the songs of Burns or the Nature poems of John Clare
These men they were born as true poets and true poets have always been rare
And in the gold rush days of the eighteen nineties Robert Service was a man inspired
Of reading his immortal ballads of the Yukon some people do never grow tired.

John Masefield once England's Poet Laureate as a young man worked as a deck hand in a boat
His inspiration to 'Saltwater Ballads' the makings of one mighty poet
He was the true poet of the people and was famed far beyond his Homeshore
His longer poems more like rhyme stories perhaps will live forever more.

William Henry Davies he tramped around the World a living legend of his time
Some might say not well educated yet he penned such beautiful rhyme
The so called literary experts do not rate him highly his verse is too simple they say
Yet in his lifetime he was loved by the masses and he still has many readers today.

They took the poetry from the people and who should be published or not they decide
And a rhymer to them is a poetaster and his or her works they only deride
But music and rhyme go together and they make for a beautiful song
And those who claim a poem must not rhyme it would seem have got their facts wrong.



You boast of your knowledge of poetry and you boast of your literary degrees
But rhyme no thanks to you is still living and enough of your rhetoric please
You preach on your own truths on poetry and your knowledge on the wordsmith trade
But the fact it will always be with us that poets are born not made.