I pray, Euterpe, please forgive the fool
Who dares attempt the sonnet’s perfect rule.
Those elegant iambs pentate a song
In cross-rhymed quatrains… damn, my rhyme scheme’s wrong!

My soul’s enthralled by such a graceful norm;
To do it justice summons all my art.
But quirks creep in to foul its flawless form
Before I know it, my meter has fallen completely apart.

The sense from form too often is divorced
By subject that’s too frail to bear the weight
Of tone arch by relentless meter forced,
And rhymes that don’t inspire but sedate.

If meager skill my passion can’t sustain,
Then I from writing sonnets should refrain.