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Philip Larkin

Day by day your estimation clocks up
Who deserves a smile and who a frown,
And girls you have to tell to pull their socks up
Are those whose pants you'd most like to pull down.

I have been meaning to mention that there is a new web site entirely devoted to the epigram. It is called The Asses of Parnassus and this is the location:

http://assesofparnassus.tumblr.com/

Two caveats: (a) many good epigrams are obscene, and so are some of the ones on this site; (b) I have been published on it, but I am calling your attention to it not for that reason, but because the subject of this thread is the epigram, and the site contains many contemporary and historical examples. You will also find epigrams there by Philip Dacey, Len Krisak, and others. If you write epigrams, try sending some there.

Susan

Susan, I was wondering whether to mention this site after seeing some of your work there. Brooke Clark, the editor, has a quatrain translating part of a Martial epigram in the current Lighten Up Online 31 (September) as well as a longer piece in the current Light.

Here's one by John Hewitt:

W.R.R.

This country parson with the corncob pipe
has secret vices, has been known to write
pun-cluttered verse like Hopkins overripe,
and read Krafft-Ebbing very late at night.

Awesome Thread! I've long loved this of Pope's, sometimes titled "Epigram Engraved Upon the Collar of a Dog Which I Gave to His Royal Highness":


I AM his Highness’ dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, Sir, whose dog are you?

I must say I have a weakness for the sort of donnish port-redolent 18th century offerings with epigraphs almost as long as the verse, as in the following anonymous effort:

On the College of Wadham at Oxford being insured from Fire, after a member had been suspected of an unnatural Crime

Well did the amorous sons of Wadham
Their house secure from future flame;
They knew their crime, the crime of Sodom,
And judg'd their punishment the same.

Here's an uncharacteristically clean one from the wonderful Earl of Rochester, on Charles II:

We have a pretty witty king,
Whose word no man relies on;
He never said a foolish thing,
And never did a wise one.

I've always liked the following by Graeme Wilson (in the BBC's Listener many years ago) though not sure if it's really an epigram.

Pyromaniac

In the Coventry Guild Accounts
For stage -props and attire
This item stands among the many
That Miracle plays require:
To Jonathan Williams, fourpence ,
For settynge ye Worlde on fyre.

I have a bunch of epigrams (both translations and my own) coming out in Sleaze & Slander next month, including a raunchy Late Antique Latin one rendered as a limerick. I have also been working on Middle Welsh englynion, a form of epigram, but have been failing miserably.

In a Facebook post, Leslie Monsour has just reminded me of this one:


Robert Frost
THE HARDSHIP OF ACCOUNTING

Never ask of money spent
Where the spender thinks it went.
Nobody was ever meant
To remember or invent
What he did with every cent.