PEDOMETER

My thoughts beat out in sonnets while I walk,

And every evening on the homeward street

I find the rhythm of my marching feet

Throbs into verses ( though the rhyme may balk. )

I think the sonneteers were walking men:

The form is dour and rigid, like a clamp,

But with the swing of legs the tramp, tramp, tramp

Of syllables begins to thud, and then —

Lo! while you seek a rhyme for hook or crook

Vanished your shabby coat, and you are kith

To all great walk-and-singers — Meredith,

And Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Keats, and Rupert Brooke!

Free verse is poor for walking, but a sonnet —

O marvellous to stride and brood upon it!