And Another Thing | 27 February 2008

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.