Rhyming Bondage Poem by gershon hepner

I, of rhyming fond, itch
to rhyme. It is a bondage
blank poets cannot match,
since they aren’t up to scratch.

What causes me to tingle
are word-endings that jingle,
not lilies marred by gilt on,
enchained, as claimed by Milton.
who in his Paradise
lost rhyming, I surmise,
because it kept him waitin’
for Godot not, but Satan.

A bondage sweet is rhyming.
It links words by two-timing
their ends, in copulation
which is my inspiration.

Inspired by reading in the Morgan Library (which has the world's only manuscript of part of 'Paradise Lost, ' bought by Mr. Morgan in 1904) a diatribe against rhyming with which Milton prefaced the third printing of Paradise Lose in 1668, after many people had complained to hi: 'But it doesn't rhyme! ' He wrote in the introduction that he was deliberately avoiding the 'jingling sound of like-endings':

The neglect then of Rime so little is to be taken as a defect, though it may seem so to vulgar Readers, that it rather is to be esteem'd as an example set, the first in English, recovered to the Heroic Poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of Rimeing.
I wrote to Stanley Fish: “Comparing myself, a compulsive rhymer, favorably with John, who hated the jingling of rhyme, I wrote this poem. What's the punishment you suggest? ” His response, sent on February 3,2009, was:
Reading Ben Jonson on the subject ('A Fir Against Rhyme') which will be a pleasure, not a punishment—SF

11/17/08