Epigrams
 

Surprisingly, there has not been, ever in the history of Eratosphere, a MoM thread on epigrams. Or if there was one my search didn’t find it.

I love a good epigram. For one thing, it doesn’t take long to read. For another, it is easy to memorize. A number of Sphere members have written some excellent epigrams, but this thread is for epigrams by others. I am pretty sure that translations of epigrams by Sphereans would be kosher, though (by MoM rules).

Here are a couple by the Scottish poet Tom Scott (1918-95):


Beeching

When Beeching for the wark he’d duin
xxxIs sent doun ti perdition,
Satan’ll say in fricht, “pass on—
xxxI want nae competition.”

Beeching = Richard Beeching (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeching_cuts)


A Writers’ Conference

Douce Embro fowk are in a steir,
xxxFor meetin aa in quorum,
A wheen stray dogs hae gaithert here
xxxAnd pisht on their decorum.

Douce = Sedate
Embro = from Edinburgh
steir = stir
aa = all
wheen = number of


And it’s pretty hard to beat Roy Campbell’s

On Some South African Novelists

You praise the firm restraint with which they write—
I’m with you there, of course:
They use the snaffle and the curb all right,
But where’s the bloody horse?

Maybe too familiar to be enlightening, but it would be odd to omit them. Is the last an epigram? (Sorry for the odd periods; I can't remember how to make lines indent.)

Sir John Harington, "Treason"

Treason doth never prosper--What's the reason?
If it doth prosper, none dare call it treason.

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, "Epitaph on Charles II"

Here lies our Sovereign Lord the King,
. Whose word no man relies on,
Who never said a foolish thing,
. Nor ever did a wise one.

Isaac Bickerstaffe, "An Expostulation"

When I attempted your pity to move,
. What made you so deaf to my prayers?
Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love,
. But--why did you kick me downstairs?

J.V. Cunningham gives us quite a few poems he called epigrams, a whole collection. Some of them are too long to fit my sense of the epigram, but here's a short one:


from Epigrams: A Journal, #30

This Humanist whom no beliefs constrained
Grew so broad-minded he was scatter-brained.

And a slightly longer one:


from Epigrams: A Journal, #20


After some years Bohemian came to this—
This Maenad with hair down and gaping kiss
Wild on the barren edge of under fifty.
She would finance his art if he were thrifty.

R.L. Barth served as a Marine reconnaissance leader in Vietnam. I haven't found any of his epigrams about war itself, but here's what he has to say about what was happening around it:

Social Darwinism

Professionally aided,
The Privileged became,
Until the danger faded,
The weak and halt and lame.

I once had a rose named after me
and I was very flattered,
except for the catalog description:
no good in a bed,
but fine up against a wall.

.....................................Eleanor Roosevelt

I'll bet you $100 or the Australian equivalent, Ross - loser to donate it to the Sphere - that you can't substantiate it's an Eleanor Roosevelt quote. You're a googling hot shot - why don't you google this and see what you find. What I find is no actual source or reference - just the attribution to Eleanor Roosevelt - and any number of posts indicating it's nonsense.

I assume it's been around for a while. Otherwise, it would mention Hillary.

Here are two from Jan Schreiber's Pecadilloes:

The Angler

Pompous has found a worthy mark at last:
young and amazed, she dotes upon his airs,
swallowing lines he's practiced years to cast:
She strikes, he reels, as they go up the stairs.

The Crowd

They watched him drawn and quartered,
xxxxxthe wretched sinner,
and when they got back home
xxxxxsat down to dinner.

I'm editing back because I hesitate to post again when I've posted so much. Here's one of Dan Brown's little gems:

Epitaph for Deconstruction

A puff of wind that really shouldn't
Have blown so many so far astray--
And yet not anyone who wouldn't
Have come to nothing anyway.

a politician is an arse upon
which everyone has sat except a man
(e e cummings)

EPIGRAM V
Baltasar de Alcazar

... Juana, what's behind
my torment? Only you.
My heartaches would be few
if you were less unkind.
... It doesn't seem absurd
for it to be inferred
your motive is my money.
If so, then kiss me, honey,
right on this poem's third word.




Original Spanish:

Juana, pues que no dais cabo
Al tormento en que me veis,
Y de ordinario volvéis
A mis lástimas el rabo,
Temo que queréis dinero;
Si es cierto lo que refiero,
Bien podéis de aquí adelante
Besarme en el consonante
Que tiene el verso primero.

Here's one that has always meant a lot to me.

I said to Heart, 'How goes it?' Heart replied:
'Right as a Ribstone Pippin!' But it lied.

Hilaire Belloc

Yes, I'm amazed that there's never been a thread on this topic before. Anyway, here are a couple of well-known ones by Auden:

Private faces in public places
Are wiser and nicer
Than public faces in private places.


Pick a quarrel, go to war,
Leave the hero in the bar;
Hunt the lion, climb the peak:
No one guesses you are weak.


And one of the best political epigrams of all time, from the Peasants' Revolt:

When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?

And, speaking of Auden, I have called upon this at many a reading...

A poet's hope: to be,
like some valley cheese,
local, but prized elsewhere.

Belloc is good at epigrams:

The accursed power that stands on Privilege
(And goes with Women, and champagne and Bridge)
Broke - and Damocracy resumed her reign:
(Which goes with Bridge, and Women and Champagne).

I'm tired of Love: I'm still more tired of Rhyme.
But Money gives me pleasure al the time.

Good morning, Algernon: Good morning, Percy.
Good morning, Mrs Roebeck. Christ, have mercy!

Perhaps this one's a little too long to be an epigram, but I feel you can't have Belloc without Chesterton, so here's his "Elegy in a Country Churchyard":

THE men that worked for England
They have their graves at home:
And birds and bees of England
About the cross can roam.

But they that fought for England,
Following a falling star,
Alas, alas for England
They have their graves afar.

And they that rule in England,
In stately conclave met,
Alas, alas for England
They have no graves as yet.

At Ladew, the most famous topiary garden in North America, and also down the street from where I grew up, there is this Belloc inscribed around a sundial which I transcribe from memory so don't quote me:

I am a sundial, I botch
what's done far better by a watch.

A fine poem, Gregory, but not IMO an epigram. Chetserton was not (I am glad to say) an epigrammic man. Discursive rather.

Here's one from Ogden Nash:

Reflection on the Fallibility of Nemesis

He who is ridden by a conscience
Worries about a lot of nonscience;
He without benefit of scruples
His fun and income soon quadruples.

And another one:

The Wasp

The wasp and all his numerous family
I look upon as a major calamily.
He throws open his nest with prodigality,
But I distrust his waspitality.

Editing back: Some damn spelling algorithm corrected Nash's "calamily," so I've corrected its correction.

And if I simply drop the name of Dorothy Parker, people will come up with their own favorites, but here's one anyway:

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.

Mike Juster is a fountain of epigrams, but the only one I can quickly find on the net is:

A Stern Warning to Canada

If you want peace,
withdraw your geese.

Lots of good ones here, and (for me) new as well.

Here's an obvious choice to add to the anthology:


Her whole Life is an Epigram, smack-smooth & nobly pen'd,
Platted quite neat to catch applause with a sliding noose at the end.

--William Blake

Administration
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.

MARRIAGE
Philip Larkin

'My wife and I -- we're pals. Marriage is fun.'
Yes: two can live as stupidly as one.

A gem by X.J. Kennedy:

ARS POETICA

The goose that laid the golden egg
Died looking up its crotch
To find out how its sphincter worked.
Would you lay well? Don't watch.

That one is laugh-out-loud funny, Gail. Here's another X. J. Kennedy epigram:

A Brat's Reward

At the market Philbert Spicer
Peered into the bacon slicer—
Whiz! the wicked slicer sped
Back and forth across his head
Quickly shaving—what a shock!—
Fifty chips off Phil's old block,
Stopping just above the eyebrows.
Phil's not one of them thar highbrows.

Epigram by John Dryden
 

EPITAPH
Intended for Dryden's Wife

Here lies my wife! here let her lie!
Now she's at rest, and so am I.


-Dryden

Thanks for these. There are also some very good epigrams (among other excellent but non-epigrammatic poems) on this old thread, whose reacquaintance I was happy to make.

University Curriculum

In this factory, here the axe-grinders
are whetted by degrees,
there are courses in log-rolling
and a shortage of trees.

--William Price Turner

TURBULENCE

Clouds are pretty up above,
But shitty in the middle of.
Julie Kane




(If Julie really loved me, she would insert my "Louisiana Politics" on this thread.)

Julie Kane isn't the only Julie who loves you, Gail, so I'll post this one:


On Politicians

The politician,
like the tabby's young,
attempts to clean his backside
with his tongue.

--Gail White


* * *

Edited to say: That's how it is in my copy of The Accidental Cynic, but I do like the version you're referencing even better.


On Louisiana Politics

The politician, like the tabby's young,
Attempts to clean his backside with his tongue.

General Rule
 

Sir, I admit your general rule,
That every poet is a fool;
But you yourself may serve to show it,
That every fool is not a poet.

-Alexander Pope