For Real Toads: Sunday mini-challenge

Robert Herrick
1591-1674
Wikipedia photo

For the last Sunday mini-challenge of the year at the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, our Kerry has introduced to us the work of poet Robert Herrick and his variation in the line lengths of last week's Common or Hymnal Measure.


I'm having one of those days wherein I can't take very much very seriously, and find myself addressing my submission to Kerry herself, 'way over there in South Africa, from whence she attempts to educate the ineducable, such as I, to write something that doesn't sound like Rudyard Kipling or Robert W. Service.

I submit hereby a plea on behalf of all humorous essayists who attempt, and fail, to versify seriously, so that hymnists everywhere might forgive us for adding extra two-syllable lines here and there, etcetera.

dear poetess, we smile to see

you varying the form

as Herrick did so long ago

to take it from the norm,

Wikipedia photo

but wait!

two syllables do not 

a full

line make

nor does my rhyme fit in

the form

we make for Herrick’s sake

    

we take our inspiration from

the model you provided

and hope that we will find ourselves

praised and not derided

but haste!

we must the deadline make:

Sunday

will be

Monday, ere my wee rhyme

can be read by you o’er there

in South African time