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The Ode of Stephen Fry - written 17/01/06 - Transcribed same © - HumourAt Christmas as a welcome giftMy daughter-in-law, a woman of tasteAnd words and knowledge and sensible thriftAnd being aware that from time to timeI indulge myself in self-wrought rhymeGave me a book by Stephen Fry“The Ode less Travelled”“A copy” do I hear you cry“of that other Road ?” Unravelled,As I perused its pages; it expoundedAll the roots of rhyme and verse.Just look at the Contents, picked by chance,“Iambic pentameters” a well-known dance“End-stopping, Enjambement and Caesura”What intellectual joy could be the purerTo codify and list and write in blackOn virgin paper white ? “Trochaic, Pyrhhic,Dactyl, Molossus and Tribrach”What more erudition could we askch?“Quaternary feet” I didn’t know that Quadripeds could scan: though my old catWas more than a friend; if only I’d known That man could write to him, and he to me…What feline thoughts would from his pawsHave given me pause?The Amphibrach, Amphimacer, quatrain, Sapphic OdePindaric, The Rubai, Ottava Rima, Horatian and RondeauRondel, Roundel, Rondelet, Roundelay, Triolet and Kyrielle.The Clerihew, the limerick, haiku, senryu, tanka, ghazalLuc, bat, tanaga, Shakespearian sonnets and thoseOf brave Petrarch. Oh, Mr Fry, you make my mind to reel:My poetry’s quite simple, word on word with rhythm in my voiceI write, I know not the ordeal to analyse or quantifyI simply write as I simply feel.