:-D A wonderful poem. When I was a TEFL teacher, I sometimes tortured advanced students with it.
As for the panel... well, Dash-to-Panel tames it:
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1160/dash-to-panel/
... but it does not handle vertical mode well. E.g. Status icons should be in rows, not a single column.
...Seat, sweat, chaste, caste, Leigh, eight, height, Put, nut, granite, and unite. ... [0]
And I do agree on the very high amount of pixels wasted in the top panel, expecially on an ultrawide monitor, something MacOS does better. On a laptop screen it's ok for me.
[0] http://ncf.idallen.com/english.html