Freud and Jung

When sparkling springtime Doctor Young
And vernal Doctor Joy
Their arms, words, thoughts, widely outflung
The whole world was their toy.
But clottish schools their systems cloy
With death and dread and dung—
Oh miserable Doctor Joy!
Oh aged Doctor Young!

This little poem was originally published in The Asses of Parnassus, a string of occasional poems in Tumblr, focused on epigrams. “Short, witty, formal poems”, as editor Brooke Clark defines his search.

Jung & Freud is a frivolous piece, based on nothing more than trying to find flippant irony in the names of two of history’s best-known psychiatrists. It uses a bouncy little rhythm with lines of four feet followed by lines of three. The rhymes are simple, repetitive, reversed; the mirroring brings you back to where you started, but with everything reversed.