154 chapter 5
My rhymes no longer stand arrayed
Like Prussian soldiers on parade 15
That march,
Stiff as starch,
Foot to foot,
Boot to boot,
Blade to blade, 20
Button to button,
Cheeks and chops and chins like mutton.^18Graves’s poem is regulated by “any little rhyme” without any regular time, per-
forming its own delusion with traditional verse forms,^19 and seeing what hap-
pens when he puts them into “uniform.” The lines, “My rhymes no longer
stand arrayed / Like Prussian soldiers on parade” are the most metrically regu-
lar lines of the poem, and directly link metrical form to military form. “Foot
to foot” becomes “boot to boot,” and then, dangerously, “blade to blade.” Mili-
tary discipline is preceded by the disciplines of “classical tradition.” Graves ac-
cuses poets, who attempt to artificially arrange their poems into “meaningless
conceits,” of being “petty.” The action of “disciplining” language into poetic
form is allegorized as violent, and the verbs Graves uses to describe the dese-
cration of language allude to both violence during wartime and that of English
ideas of propriety:
How petty
To t a k e
A merry little rhyme
In a jolly little time 35
And poke it
And choke it
Change it, arrange it
Straight-lace it, deface it,
Pleat it with pleats, 40
Sheet it with sheets,
Of empty meaningless conceits,
And chop and chew
And hack and hew
And weld it into a uniform stanza, 45
And evolve a neat
Complacent, complete,
Academic extravaganza!^20The “rhymes,” like Saintsbury’s armies of soldierly feet, are welded “into a uni-
form stanza,” “button to button,” “neat” and “complacent,” “complete.” And