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;
Every one knows Homer's fate;
Some of Keats is 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 kittle.
You may credit it or not--
Now and then _I_ slump a little!