[oliver murray]

Marilyn,

Whatever about the ending, I always thought “Birches” one of Frost’s less satisfactory poems

Strong endings are not always appropriate, of course, but “Dulce et Decorum Est” was one of the poems that turned me on to poetry many years ago, and I still love the ending, the way the Latin slots neatly into the meter.


My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Philip Larkin has some great endings, such as this, from “The Whitsun Weddings”:

……………………..We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.

Or the beautifully fudged ending to “An Arundel Tomb”

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

And Frost? The wonderful ending to “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

As for dull or so-so endings - a rather large proportion of villanelles and sestinas. But nothing else much springs to mind, as you would expect with dull endings.