In Poetasters Hell

If there is a hereafter of which prophets foretell I will be with my own kind in Poetasters Hell I'll be with those who penned stuff that they could not sell But together we will pen heaps of doggerel. Heaven will be home to the poetic greats Byron and Shakespeare and Masefield and Yeats, Burns and Scott and Wordsworth and Clare With the Gods of Heaven their verses will share. And Yeats will be there serenading Maud Gonne And as usual she will reject him but for her he'll pen on But this time his persistence may pay a huge dividend When to him she may become more than a friend. James Clarence Mangan Ireland's National Bard who of consumption died On Earth of a fair go he had been denied But happier now than he ever had been Still penning poems to his Dark Rosaleen. Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Browning are there With Heaven's best poets they do surely compare Chaucer and Dante and Lorca and Homer of Greece Are living forever in eternal peace. If there's a hereafter then surely I'll be In Poetasters Hell with those similar to me In a dingy garret living it rough And penning what critics call terrible stuff.