Picture the time: Tolkein is the master of fantasy, for both The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Tolkein's friend, C.S. Lewis' fantasy series Narnia had been published in the 1950s. 1968 had seen the publication of A Wizard of Earthsea (Ursula Le Guin) and Dragonfight (Anne McCaffrey). Dragons were back in business. 

This poem was written in 1975, at about the same time as I wrote Atlantis, as well as The Day The Rains Came. The latter and The Dragon were both submitted, and rejected, for publication, and you can read the whole tale in the notes on The Fish, which I wrote in response.

The criticism of the Dragon was that it was versification, not poetry; that the rhyming scheme lead to "jingle", and that there were clichés everywhere. Looking back over the rejection letter, I note that they spelt it "cliche's," so as a grammar fiend, perhaps I knew my language better.

The line between verse and poetry is vague, and probably contextual. Take this one: "...Come, pensive nun, devout and pure
Sober, steadfast and demure,
All in a robe of darkest grain
Flowing with majestic train
And sable stole of cypress lawn
Over thy decent shoulders drawn..."   Milton (1608-1674), from Il Penseroso

or this:
"... All through the night-time, clock talked to clock,
In the captain’s cabin, tock-tock-tock,
One ticked fast and one ticked slow,
And Time went over them a hundred years ago."  Kenneth Slessor (1901-1971), from
                                                   "Five Visions of Captain Cook"

"How straight it flew, how long it flew,
    It cleared the rutty track
And soaring, disappeared from view
    Beyond the bunker's back ——
A glorious, sailing, bounding drive
That made me glad I was alive. ..."   Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984, Poet Laureate,
                                                     from "Seaside Golf"

Il Penseroso looks "old fashioned" -it was written about 400 years ago, so no surprise. I could call "devout and pure," and the next line clichéd and just there for the rhyme, except that it may or may not have been clichéd at the time, and rhyming is what poets do -  even including Poets Laureate. Slessor's "Two chronometers" is jingly, and if you don't get the tick-tock joke, read up on it - it is extraordinarily well crafted and researched. The rhythm is what makes the poem special. As for Seaside Golf -  there are two more verses of similar content about that particular golf hole, followed by a final verse about the ocean and cliffs. Is it just "versification"? Possibly - it's not a poem of great moment, but then you can't be serious all the time. As an aside, Betjeman is reputed to have once replied "not enough sex" when asked what the biggest single regret of his life was.

Where does that leave The Dragon? Is it "jingly"? Damned right it is and deliberately so. Part of the point of those ever continuous rhymes that trip over each over is to fly joyously like the dragon, and "scream in (his) delight." When I found a rhyme set that I liked, I stored up in my mind a stack of possible lines and put them everywhere they fitted. 

There are 13 lines that end with “-ight", including a few repetitions or semi-repetitions. There are sets of rhymes that half chime with each other - words that sound like "-i" - die, high, are linked by assonance to Hide, ride, tide, and to flight, bright, etc, and wine, shine.

Similarly, there is glow and blow, which semi-rhymes with yellows and bellows (the emphasis is on the wrong syllable to be a full rhyme, and there is an "s"as well,) and there is a non-quite assonance with the five "-old" word that also occur at the end of the second verse. Back vs ash vs crack, etc.

The poem is also loaded with alliterative sounds: Cotton, CloudS, SCuddering, SetS, Shuddering, SCared, ShadowS, SpeCtreS, StalKS, SpiritS. All those in half a dozen lines, and they continue throughout.

Clichés: Dragons themselves are cliché. Writing about colours and fire and flying and scales and clouds leaves you in such territory. I've tried to use the words in slightly different ways, but if you keep throwing words on the page like this, you end up with them sometimes, and decide whether to keep them for their merits or find another way. I find the "smouldering, smoking stack" worth keeping for its sibilance. Note that some words from the original were changed in the update, so hopefully the newer version has a few less obvious ones.

I read this to Juliet for the first time before I entered it onto Empty Chairs. She didn't know why the dragon went on to die in the last verse. In my mind it was clear that it was the dragon's last, joyous flight and that he then went off to die happily. So I added an extra verse to make that clear. She should have known: In Dragonflight, when a dragon is injured or its rider dies, it is likely to wink out of existence. But I think she had the right of it. After editing the poem, I renamed it "Final Flight".