And Another Thing

1 March 2008

Ten perfect poems and one little brown man

It is said that when the British public is asked, ‘What is your favourite poem?’, the one chosen by most people is Kipling’s ‘If’. Is there any evidence for this? And is it still true? And what would the Americans choose? Walt Whitman’s ‘Captain’? No, obviously not. But then what? Longfellow’s ‘The Ship’, I hope. Musing on these things, I decided to compile a list of the best ten short poems in English. That is, my favourite ten: I stake no claims to canonical authority. Here is the result, in no strict chronological order, but according to whim.

First I would pick Shelley’s sonnet ‘Ozymandias’, because it illustrates perfectly the essential merits of a good short poem. It is multum in parvo; it has a definite point; the point is moral as well as intellectual; it conjures up a striking visual image; it has one or two lines that cling tenaciously to the memory. Was Shelley in a position to make a moral point? No matter. A good poet is still a messenger of God, albeit shopsoiled by life. Next I would pick Milton’s ‘Light’. It is not exactly short — 55 lines — but it is so much better than his more famous sonnet, ‘On His Blindness’, and is the best celebration of the spiritual joy of physical disablement ever written. Every line is a jewel and sparkles with insight. It is a reminder that Milton is second only to Shakespeare among our poets, and at his best his equal.

Picking the best short poem of Shakespeare is almost impossible. There are at least 20 superb sonnets to begin with, of which four (‘Shall I compare thee’, ‘Like as the waves’, ‘When in disgrace with fortune’, ‘Full many a glorious morning’) are of the highest class. There are over a score of magnificent songs, too, from the plays. Of these, I would choose the evocation of winter from Love’s Labours Lost, beginning ‘When icicles hang by the wall’ — 16 lines of pure joy, which amazes one by the ground it covers. Twelve distinct images flash across the mind-screen, each perfect and distinct. We also meet four characters, Dick the shepherd blowing on his hands, Tom piling in the logs, Marion about whom we know nothing except that her nose is raw and red, poor thing, and Greasy Joan, keeling her pots, the lowest skivvy in all Shakespeare but who, I suspect, still sings at her work.

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