The joys of light verse

Coleridge defined poetry as the best words in the best order and at no stage did he ever suggest that being light-hearted in verse is any less worthy than the solemnest offerings of Milton or of his old pal Wordsworth. Nevertheless, there is a feeling among many who take their art seriously that anything in verse form liable to raise a good natured smile is somehow not the real thing, no matter how well it is executed and however perfectly it conforms with rhyme and metre.

And yet since the earliest days of the quill pen, some our greatest poets have deliberately used humour to enlighten, inform and indeed entertain their readers. OK, so there aren’t many laughs in Beowulf, and I don’t remember giving silent thanks to the anonymous author of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight for raising anything much more than yet another sigh as I head for the umpteenth time to the glossary at the back of my well-foxed Oxford edition.