Jerome Gambit: Poetry or Prose?

I recently ran across a copy of  Chess: Its Poetry and Its Prose A Practical and Theoretical Treatise on the Arts of Composing and Solving Chess Problems, with Numerous Illus., Diagrams, Containing Essays on the Principles of Porblem Composition, Practical Composition, the Art of Solving, with Solutions and Critical and Explanatory Notes, Also Elementary Instructions for Beginners by Arthur Ford Mackenzie (1887).

In a short section titled "Glimpses of the Openings" I found 10 openings mentioned, and was pleased to see that the Jerome Gambit was one of them. I have changed the notation from descriptive to algebraic.

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ 

This move constitutes the gambit. It is the invention of an American, whose name it bears. The sacrifice of the Bishop is unsound if Black play properly, but, to an inexperienced player, defeat follows in most cases very rapidly.

4...Kxf7 

Of course it is correct to capture the Bishop, and the game will probably proceed thus:

5.Nxe5+ Nxe5 6.Qh5+ Ke6 

Best.

7.Qf5+ Kd6 8.d4 Bxd4 9.Na3 c6 10.c3 Qf6 11.cxd4 Qxf5 12.exf5 Nf7 13.Bf4+ Ke7 

and Black is now out of all immediate danger, and is numerically much stronger than White.

It is relevant to mention that MacKenzie notes

Valuable works are Cook's Synopsis of the Chess Openings, and Horowitz' Chess Studies and End-games.

Indeed, the line of analysis above comes directly from Cook's Synopsis (1882, 1884) - which, in turn, was taken from S.A. Sorensen's seminal Jerome Gambit article in the May 1877 issue of Nordisk Skaktidende.

I, for one, would like to think of the Jerome Gambit as poetry, rather than prose, although, in all fairness, it is more likely doggerel than sonnet.