I’ve opened up my Dickens and
I’ve just begun to read
The prose with vocab that is new
Through it I cannot speed
Spasmodic and dissociate
And farinaceous too
Purblind and contumaciously
What do they mean to you
It used to be that we could write
In dancing prose with joy
But now the writing rarely sings
But will sometimes annoy
I think it’s time the novelists
Arose from years of sleep
And wrote a book that all shelves will
In future need to keep