Five syllables," Apollo said, counting them on his fingers. "That would be real bad.
The interesting thing is that you don't often meet a poet who doesn't have a sense of humour, and some of them do keep it out of their poems because they're afraid of being seen as light versifiers.
I had rather be a kitten and cry mew Than one of these same metre ballet-mongers.
I can scarce bring myself to believe, that I am admitted to a familiar correspondence, and all the license of friendship, with a man who writes blank verse like Milton.
Cursed be the verse, how well so e'er it flow, That tends to make one worthy man my foe.
Then, at the last and only couplet fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, A needless Alexandrine ends the song, That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.
Who all in raptures their own works rehearse, And drawl out measur'd prose, which they call verse.
