What is your favorite short poem approximating twelve lines or less?

Here is mine by W.B. Yeats:

WHEN YOU ARE OLD

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.



[This message has been edited by Carl Sundell (edited August 30, 2002).]

That's a great one, Carl. (You've got a typo, though -- should be "hid his face.") Here's a short poem by James Merrill:

RENEWAL

Having used every subterfuge
To shake you, lies, fatigue, even that of passion,
Now I see nothing but a clean break.
I add that I am willing to bear the guilt.

You nod assent. Autumn turns windy, huge,
A clear vase of dry leaves vibrating on and on.
We sit, watching. When I next speak
Love buries itself in me, up to the hilt.

The Yeats is an interesting choice, as it is also a translation of sorts.

This is one of my all-time favorite short poems, by Robert Graves. (Actually, it also might be interesting to discuss it in the loose/accentual meter thread...)

I've posted it on these boards before, so apologies for the repetition:

Love Without Hope

Love without hope, as when the young bird-catcher
Swept off his tall hat to the Squire's own daughter,
So let the imprisoned larks escape and fly
Singing about her head, as she rode by.

Damn, Alicia, that's beautiful. Just made my week.

Frost, of course, was a master at this.

The Span of Life

The old dog barks backward without getting up.
I can remember when he was a pup.

And I've always liked this, by Aiken:

Music I Heard

Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.

Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, beloved,
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.

For it was in my heart that you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;
And in my heart they will remember always —
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.


(robt)

The Oxford Book of Short Poems isn't very good, but they made the maximum 13 lines to avoid being over-whelmed by sonnets.The best short poem? One I can remember only vaguely is from the Greek Anthology:
Best, never born,
Next best, die young;
Not drag your way
To weary age.
I am probably misquoting, but does anyone recognise it? I add that I admire the expression, not the sentiment.

Hector, it is a common sentiment in Greek literature. Perhaps Tony Lombardy could tell us where this expression of it may be from.

Sophocles says something very like it somewheres, I think-- Antigone or Oedipus at Colonos perhaps.

A favorite contemporary 12-line poem on much the same theme (and which has also been posted here before) is "This Be the Verse"...

There are too many good ones!

Well, since I'm pretty much a Cliftonphile at this point, I'll offer this odd, little 5-line dedication for her book Good News about the Earth:

<dir>for the dead
of jackson and
orangeburg
and so on and
so on and on</dir>

--something in the line-breaking and phrasing, the concision, always sends chills down my back.

C.

As to the Greek verse, there is an exchange supposedly between Homer and Hesiod that runs as follows:

HESIOD: `Homer, son of Meles, inspired with wisdom from heaven, come,
tell me first what is best for mortal man?'

HOMER: `For men on earth 'tis best never to be born at all; or
being born, to pass through the gates of Hades with all speed.'

I've known it for years, including through a fractured skull and brain damage so it could be a memory of translating/adapting the Hesiod/Homer exchange at school: our Classics master used to emphasise brevity as a virtue in translation.
Another adaptation from the Greek anthology is A.D.Hope's on the Australians who died in Vietnam:

Go tell the old men, safe in bed,
We took their orders and are dead.

A friend wrote what he thinks is the greatest contrast between length of title and length of poem:

On W.H.Auden's "September 1, 1939"
A lie
and shame
from "I"
to "flame".