Four-score years ago a historian gave out
That the loss of structure in works of art
Exposed a culture in decline
If so then these pages effect such exposure

And was Whitman’s America more in decline
Than Baudelaire’s France
He who created alexandrines
Among the vers libre

And what is this structure and where
The millions of heroic couplets
Marching through the neo-classical age
Spoke they of a culture ascendant

But the historian found charm
In mannerist deformities and weightlessness baroque
And Pater too admired a comely decadence
Rigor dissolved in deliquescence

And yet it takes energy to persist
Amid lassitude and enervation
It takes will to take on willingly
The disease of poetry