We ordered him to write a verse.

The poet laboured night and day,

With little rest and with no pay,

And penned the best he could muster.

But as time passed, we feared the worse;

Now his ode has lost its lustre.

 

Its shiny eloquence has gone,

Its bounce and pace is weighted down

And, like a fading seaside town,

The content has slipped out of date.

There is an air of dying swan

In rusting rhymes, so second-rate.

 

How has it lost its spark so fast?

The sell-by date has reached the bard

Yet he once seemed quite avant-garde.

It shows how quickly fashions change

And lines of words aren’t built to last.

New stuff, though, seems beyond our range.