Life & Letters | 26 March 2011

When cares attack, and life seems black,
How sweet it is to pot a yak,
Or puncture hares or grizzly bears,
And others I could mention;
But in my animal Who’s Who
No name stands higher than the gnu,
And each new gnu that comes in view
Receives my prompt attention.

Wodehouse, of course, as I am sure all Spectator readers won’t need to be told, from one of the Mulliner stories as I remember, and a perfect snatch of light verse, witty and dancing.

Just what constitutes light verse is no more easy to define than to decide what separates verse from poetry. Auden included Kipling’s ‘Danny Deever’ in an anthology of light verse, though a poem about a military execution might seem rather to belong to a book of grim verse. This is not so much because of the subject matter as the tone. Light verse can certainly treat of the dark side of things, but does so light-heartedly; witness Harry Graham’s Ruthless Rhymes or Housman’s ditty about a rather nasty rail accident which begins, ‘ “Hallelujah” was the only observation/ That escaped Lieutenant- Colonel Mary Jane.’