The Ballad of English Literature
[Sung to the tune of "Land of Hope and Glory"]
Chaucer was a class traitor
Shakespeare hated the mob
Donne sold out a bit later
Sidney was a nob
Marlowe was an elitist
Ben Jonson was much the same
Bunyan was a defeatist
Dryden played the game
Chaucer was a class traitor
Shakespeare hated the mob
Donne sold out a bit later
Sidney was a nob
Marlowe was an elitist
Ben Jonson was much the same
Bunyan was a defeatist
Dryden played the game
There's a sniff of reaction
About Alexander Pope
Sam Johnson was a Tory
And Walter Scott a dope
Coleridge was a right winger
Keats was lower middle class
Wordsworth was a cringer
But William Blake was a gas
Dickens was a reformist
Tennyson was a blue
Disraeli was mostly pissed
And nothing that Trollope said was true
Willy Yeats was a fascist
So were Eliot and Pound
Lawrence was a sexist
Virginia Woolf was unsound
There are only three names
To be plucked from this dismal set
Milton Blake and Shelley
Will smash the ruling class yet
Milton Blake and Shelley
Will smash the ruling class yet.
--
in Against the Grain, Essays by Terry Eagleton, Verso Books.
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