Having recently edited a large anthology of epigrams and
other short poems, I thought I might type in a few of my
favorites.
One little-known one by Larkin:
None of the books have time
To say how being selfless feels.
They make it sound a superior way
Of getting what you want. It isn't at all.
Selflessness is like waiting in a hospital
In a badly-fitting suit on a cold wet morning.
Selfishness is like listening to good jazz
With drinks for further orders and a huge fire.
An anonymous medieval one:
Omnes gentes plaudite!
I saw many birds sitten on a tree;
They tooken their flight and flowen away
With Ego dixi, have a good day!
Many white feathers hath the pie--
I may no more singen, my lips are so dry.
Many white feathers hath the swan--
The more that I drink, the less good I can.
Lay sticks on the fire, well may it brenne!
Give us one drink ere we go henne.
And Pope's famous but still gorgeous thing:
When other Ladies to the Groves go down,
Corinna still, and Fulvia, stay in town;
Those Ghosts of Beauty lingering here reside,
And haunt the Places where their Honour died.
One of Kipling's Epitaphs of the War (all of which
are wonderful):
The Sleepy Sentinel
Faithless the watch that I kept: now I have none to keep.
I was slain because I slept: now I am slain I sleep.
Let no man reproach me again, whatever watch is unkept--
I sleep because I am slain. They slew me because I slept.
Not many short poems more touching or tender than
this one by Donald Justice:
On the Death of Friends in Childhood
We shall not ever meet them bearded in heaven,
Nor sunning themselves among the bald of hell;
If anywhere, in the deserted schoolyard at twilight,
Forming a ring, perhaps, or joining hands
In games whose very names we have forgotten.
Come, memory, let us seek them there in the shadows.
Henri Coulette:
Petition
Lord of the Tenth Life,
Welcome my Jerome,
A fierce, gold tabby.
Make him feel at home.
He loves bird and mouse.
He loves a man's lap,
And in winter light,
Paws tucked in, a nap.
and his epigram on Ginsberg:
Sixteen thousand lines, give or take sixteen,
And no two lines that you can read between.
And this:
Eurydice dies! The loneliness is grand.
Yet were she to come back, dust rag in hand...
And this by our own master, Tim Murphy--"Dies Irae":
At the field's edge a feather
clings briefly to a bough
before a change of weather
offers it to the plough,
much as it did my father.
(The single comma, the half rhyme--heartbreaking.)
Landor (who has many others as good or better):
How soon, alas, the hours are over,
Counted us out to play the lover!
And how much narrower is the stage,
Allotted us to play the sage!
But when we play the fool, how wide
The theatre expands; beside,
How long the audience sits before us!
How many prompters! what a chorus!
Ralph Hodgson's "The Bells of Heaven":
'Twould ring the bells of Heaven
Their wildest peal in years,
If Parson lost his senses
And people came to theirs,
And he and they together
Knelt down with angry prayers
For tamed and shabby tigers,
And dancing dogs and bears,
And wretched, blind pit ponies,
And little hunted hares.
Walter de la Mare:
Here lies, but seven years old, our little maid,
Once of the darkness Oh, so sore afraid!
Light of the World---remember that small fear
And when nor moon nor stars do shine, draw near.
My favorite Housman:
Crossing alone the nighted ferry
With the one coin for fee,
Whom, on the wharf of Lethe waiting,
Count you to find? Not me.
The brisk fond lackey to fetch and carry,
The true, sick-hearted slave,
Expect him not in the just city
And free land of the grave.
And (sometimes, I think, my favorite poem), anonymous,
from the 20s or 30s:
Carnation Milk is the best in the land;
I've got a can of it here in my hand--
No teats to pull, no hay to pitch,
You just punch a hole in the sonofabitch.
Enough.
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