One day when Shakespeare was rattling around
Dead Poets’ Country like he wore the crown,
old Ben Johnson popped out of the ground
Saying “back in the day I was a hit with the crowd”,
So Christopher Marlowe said “what about me?”
Then Homer ran up shouting “I was here first!”
And they started to fight over who was the best,
With Milton and Byron joining the contest,
Browning had a hit with “My Last Duchess”,
But Blake hit back with “Songs of Innocence”
When the battleground was invaded by cats:
Enter Elliot with Keats on his back,
Then they all got eaten up by Shere Khan,
As Kipling joined in with six good serving men,
And Marlowe came back with Faustus (again)
Bringing the whole thing into round two
Where Wordsworth and Coleridge fought in Xanadu
As Whitman summoned up tempests at sea
With the intention of sinking Innisfree
But the Mariner came with his albatross,
To scare Walt Whitman back underground
So Owen woke up and began to recite
“Dulce et Decorem est..” into the night,
When Tennyson jumped up out of his grave,
So Gerard Manley Hopkins and Shelley and Wilde
And Thomas and Bronte and the light brigade,
All charged at Rosetti, but Lear came to her aid,
And they all got crushed by the jumblies’ crew,
Til the survivors left behind were far and few,
While Burns caught Heaney getting in on the act,
Though he wasn’t quite dead, so Bob sent him back,
With Tolkien’s elves and orcs hot on his trail,
Til the inferno gulped them down at Dante’s command,
Accidentally taking off Browning’s right hand,
Now Frost was coming down the path less travelled,
When the rhythm to this poem suddenly unravelled
Knocking out Kipling who was beating up Wilde,
Who ran back to Reading for the peace and quiet,
Leaving Sylvia Plath to face Poe alone
When they both got taken out with one stone:
The winner stood victorious, the rest gave up
Shakespeare the Bard with some help from his Puck!