John Keats, in his poem entitled 'Sleep and Poetry,' after speaking of
the greatness of his favorite poets of the Elizabethan period,
continues:
Could all this be forgotten? Yes, a schism
Nurtured by foppery and barbarism,
Made great Apollo blush for this his land.
Men were thought wise who could not understand
His glories: with a puling infant's force
They sway'd about upon a rocking-horse,
And thought it Pegasus.
He alludes, of course, to the rocking-horse movement of the rhyming
couplet as used during the Popian period. As used by Chaucer, this
rocking-horse movement is not so felt.