I am the very model of a modern poet laureate,
I've information rhythmical, poetical and lexical,
I know the poets of our land and quote their plays historical,
From Macbeth to Much Ado, in order categorical;
I'm very well acquainted, too, with rhythm hendecasyllable,
I understand assonance and refrain octosyllable,
About pentameter theory I'm teeming with a lot o' news,
With many cheerful facts about the style of poet Edward Hughes.
I'm very good at couplets and at blank verse very fabulous;
I know the seventy-one plays ascribed to Aeschylus:
In short, in matters rhymical, poetical, and lexical,
I am the very model of a modern poet laureate.
I know our poem-history, Caedmon's Hymn to Chaucer's works;
I can cite bards' acrostics with volatility in my vocal box,
I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus,
In dialect ionic I can cite Semonides of Amorgos;
I can tell undoubted Aratus from Aristeus and Sophocles,
I know the croaking chorus from The Frogs of Aristophanes!
Then I can hum a fugue of which I've heard the music's din afore,
And whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense Pinafore.
Then I can write a decasyllable as a dactyl or tetrameter,
And tell you ev'ry detail of soliloquies in Shakespeare:
In short, in matters rhythmical, poetical, to elloquate,
I am the very model of a modern poet laureate.
In fact, when I know what is meant by a "septet" and a "sestet",
When I can tell at sight a literary from a prose effect,
When such affairs as odic and idyllic I'm more wary at,
And when I know precisely 'to be or not to be' by Danish "Hamlet".
When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern rhymery,
When I know more iambic than a novice in a nunnery
In short, when I'm audacious, vexatious and dilatory
You'll say a poet laureate has ne'er been so conciliatory.
For my alliteration knowledge, though I'm plucky and adventury,
Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century;
But still, in matters rhythmical, poetical and etiquette,
I am the very model of a modern poet laureate.