Word: couplets
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...doggerel that a well-educated butler might compose. The most enduringly dreadful lines were penned by the spellbound and earnest Alfred Austin in the late 19th century. Austin, author of "Leszko the Bastard, a Tale of Polish Grief," auditioned for the laureate's post with a marvelously stupefying couplet on the illness of the Prince of Wales: "Across the wires the electric message came:/ 'He is no better. He is much the same.' " Occasional verse itself, poetry on demand, almost always leads to things like that. It would be difficult for any poet, laureate...