Lament of the Literature In English Gre Subject Test-Taker
As Sol arises, greets the morn
the soon test taker wails,
"I'm doomed! If I had only read
The Canterbury Tales!
Or more of Samuel Collerige,
or Wordsworth, Yeats or Shelley,
More Medieval or Old English,
some Eliot or Browning!
Or how to spot a romantic
or how a Victorian,
or who saw Tutors on their shift
in this timeline Aenean?
I know not Byron from Whitman,
or Herrick from John Donne,
or Frost or Pound or Tennyson,
cannot read Piers Plowman.
There's just too much literature,
(I can't believe I spoke
this thought, it's blasphemy I'm sure)
like the Raven I quoth.
And though most know the Raven, I
do too, and that's not bad.
Though I think the extent of my
knowledge's not ironclad.
Though I can say with certainty,
amidst my sad lament,
the technique I used priorly
is known as enjambment.
And I know too that rhyme royal
is seven verses long,
where octavia rima's whole
is eight - one more verse strong.
And I've read Paradise Lost and
many Shakespeare works,
and much more Poe than The Raven,
and know Dickinson's quirks.
And I know Marvell and Camus
Gogol, Dostoyesky;
perhaps my portents were untrue,
my knowledge not so petty.
Perhaps I'm ready for this test,
though not well-versed as some.
Like caesuras, I'll take a rest
and stop acting so glum.
From a review book, I'll apply
this truth which first appalled:
If you know all this well, then why
attend grad school at all?"
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