Francis Duggan - In Poetasters Hell

If there is a hereafter of which prophets foretell
I will be with my own kind in Poetasters Hell
I'll be with those who penned stuff that they could not sell
But together we will pen heaps of doggerel.

Heaven will be home to the poetic greats
Byron and Shakespeare and Masefield and Yeats,
Burns and Scott and Wordsworth and Clare
With the Gods of Heaven their verses will share.

And Yeats will be there serenading Maud Gonne
And as usual she will reject him but for her he'll pen on
But this time his persistence may pay a huge dividend
When to him she may become more than a friend.

James Clarence Mangan Ireland's National Bard who of consumption died
On Earth of a fair go he had been denied
But happier now than he ever had been
Still penning poems to his Dark Rosaleen.

Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Browning are there
With Heaven's best poets they do surely compare
Chaucer and Dante and Lorca and Homer of Greece
Are living forever in eternal peace.

If there's a hereafter then surely I'll be
In Poetasters Hell with those similar to me
In a dingy garret living it rough
And penning what critics call terrible stuff.

Francis Duggan

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/in-poetasters-hell/