"Don't eat that apple!"
the Lord above bossed,
which led, when they ate it,
to Paradise lost.

Good God man, surely The Faerie Queene is the longest poem in the English Language. Or perhaps it just seems like it.

I once admitted to a college professor that I couldn't appreciate the Faerie Queene, and he told me that I was too young and that I would learn to appreciate it when I'm older. I'm pleased to say that I remain young at heart.

Interminable and indigestible. And just think, John; Spenser intended to write TWELVE bookes, but (fortunately, some would say) he only completed six.

A band of pilgrims bound for Canterbury,
We all told tales, some sad, some sweet, some merry,
Some dirty and some clean, but none as boring
As the parson's tale, which left us snoring.

The Faerie Queene is OK read in bits in a bar by the fire with a good supply of beer and french cigarettes - that last impossible now alas. . But there are many poems (Ginsberg's Howl for instance) of which a single page is a page too many. I once tried to read something by David Jones, but not very hard. And there are always Pound's Cantos, you know, the pissing Cantos. He deserved to be locked up for a very long time for that.

Everything changes. You aspire
to reach the sky, but fall, on fire.
The girl (no, bird!) is on the wing.
Love alters. Change is everything.

Ovid’s Metamorphoses

When I was at school, I remember writing the following:

Pound
Should have been drowned
At birth; and Eliot
I would love to sling a jelly at.

(Yes, I agree, it does an injustice to Eliot, but whom will we not traduce for the sake of a rhyme?)

Had we but world enough, and time,
I would not rush you, dear, but I'm
Afraid we don't, and so I nag:
Let us, while we still can, shag.

Behold my last Duchess.
By "last" I mean "most recent."
Of course there'll be another
When the interval is decent.