[Michael Juster]

I am looking for some help with a lecture I'm giving next month and would appreciate opinions on the following subject:

What is the best English poem written in iambic hexameter?

Thanks.

[Shaun J. Russell]

Some of Sidney's Astrophil and Stella sonnets might fit the bill...particularly the first one (“Fool,” said my Muse to me, “look in thy heart and write”).

[Chris Childers]

The other one that springs immediately to my mind besides the Sidney (Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show) is Yeats, "The Magi." I look forward to others' suggestions.

C

[john savoie]

There are some mighty fine alexandrines rounding of the thousands of Spenserian stanzas in the Faerie Queene.

If you want sustained hexameter, you could always make a cento.

[Gail White]

I can't think of anyone who did this well past the Elizabethans. In fact, there is a nice one attributed to the queen herself, beginning:

When I was young and fair, and favor graced me,
Of many was I sought their mistress for to be,
But I did scorn them all, and answered them therefore
Go, go, go, seek some otherwhere,
Importune me no more.

(PS: I don't suppose "Lake Isle of Innisfree" counts? I have puzzled over the scansion of that for decades now.)

[Kevin Rainbow]

The best and most extensive work in Alexandrine couplets is probably Poly-Olbion by Michael Drayton.

https://archive.org/stream/completew...ge/n7/mode/2up

[R. S. Gwynn]

I'd go with Sidney, although I've always thought most of those lines could be shortened by a couple of syllables.

There are a lot of iambic/anapestic hexameters. This is one of my favorites:

http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poet...t_picture.html

[John Whitworth]

Kipling ten, Sidney nil as far as I am concerned.

[Gregory Dowling]

Chapter 13 of David Mason's verse-novel Ludlow is in hexameter. It's the chapter that describes the battle between the striking miners and the troops, so the intention is clearly to gesture towards Homer - and it works.

[John Whitworth]

Re the battle. Is Arthur Scargill Hector, then? And why isn't the man dead in that case?