In Competition No. 3034 you were invited to provide a poem written by a poet laureate present or past on the engagement of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
There are those who view the role of laureate as a poisoned chalice. Craig Raine has described how he said to Ted Hughes, during a discussion of the then-vacant post, ‘Of course, no one in their right mind would really want it.’ (‘You’d get some terrific fishing,’ Hughes responded.) And Andrew Motion was candid about its pitfalls: ‘How was I to steer an appropriate course between familiarity (which would seem presumptuous) and sycophancy (which would seem absurd)?’
You strode into the minefield with gusto, and there was much to admire in a largish and vigorous entry. Frank Osen and A.H. Harker both took inspiration from Tennyson’s ‘The May Queen’, and I much enjoyed George Simmers’s waspish twist on Masefield’s ‘Cargoes’. The winners take £25 each.
Bliss is it in this dawn to be alive,
When love so touching in its majesty
And common truth can brighten every eye
That every downcast spirit might revive.
This couple shows how two true hearts contrive
To transcend caste, tribe and geography.
We feel a brave tomorrow drawing nigh
As unity and difference gladly thrive.
Dull would he be of soul who felt no joy
When gazing on this new iconic pair,
This much applauded girl and highborn boy
Whose romance is a gift all souls may share.
When elements diverse as these alloy,
Earth has not anything to show more fair.
Chris O’Carroll/William Wordsworth
Meghan Markle, Meghan Markle,
What a welcome royal mate!
You’ve given us a rhyme for ‘sparkle’,
A joy for any Laureate!
Better still, the prince you marry
Will provide another rhyme
When you tie the knot with Harry,
Ah, what poetry sublime!
I’m sure Her Maj, the groom’s grandmother
Will see you as a force for good;
From one soap opera to another
You’ll bring a touch of Hollywood.
Of late the feeling in our Nation
Has been cold and lost and drear.
We need a royal celebration!
How nice to line the streets and cheer!
Brian Murdoch/John Betjeman
Thou golden prince, no longer profligate,
The vagaries of youth now set aside;
Abandoning thy solitary state
Hast sought on foreign shores a comely bride.
Fate summons, thou hast reached thy princely prime
And she, cognisant with the thespian skills,
May fill the royal mould; perchance o’er time
Be blest with issue as are Kate and Wills.
Can she survive the Windsor dynasty,
This star celestial, perchance replace,
With dignity, another deity,
The fair Diana, goddess of the chase?
Thy union blest with due solemnity,
Received with public zeal, thou can’st repay
The nation’s loyalty, should thou decree
Through all the realm a national holiday.
Sylvia Fairley/John Dryden
Rise, patriotic hearts! Let proud eyes sparkle
At nature’s boon of loveliness, Miss Markle.
Pallid she may not be, but in her veins
Run rich and various ancestral strains.
Once wed already, granted, yet her state
Must be regarded as inviolate,
As chaste as is the dawn that spreads with light
The dewy pastures drowned in shade by night
And cleans with moral purpose everything,
Abundant with renewal, like the Spring.
As for Prince Harry, what churl would deny
His manly virtues who has seen him fly
Beneath the whirling blades, faint-hearted not,
This paragon by royal loins begot,
Already a commander of renown
And fifth in line to wear the British crown.
Basil Ransome-Davies/Alfred Austin
When Harry first announced his choice
And asked the nation to rejoice,
A noble lady rose to voice
A fear for Camelot.
‘To taint our culture is a sin.
It’s not the colour of her skin,
But — really! — an Amurikin?’
Asked Lady Whoozeegot.
‘Divorced? An actress?’ Bold, unhushed
She railed, then paused and faltered, crushed,
For other ladies deeply blushed.
How changed was Camelot!
Her questioning she set aside.
‘She’ll make a truly lovely bride!’
She didn’t sound the least bit snide,
The Lady Whoozeegot.
Max Gutmann/Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Drabs and dullards, go away,
For this is Harry’s wedding day
(And that, of course, of Meghan Markle).
I shall laud, with odes monarchal,
Meg and Harry’s wedding day.
(Were Dryden here, no doubt he’d say
‘Shadwellian tautology!’
But who’s the Poet Laureate? Me!
And frankly, I don’t care a fig
For what he thinks, that stuffy prig.)
Returning to the matter prime,
I’m here to celebrate in rhyme
The day that — let my poem sparkle! —
Harry marries Meghan Markle.
None shall mar this happy day,
So, drabs and dullards, go away!
Brian Allgar/Thomas Shadwell
- Holbein also painted the occasional portrait in Basel, among them the double portrait of Jakob and Dorothea Meyer, and, in 1519, that of the young academic Boniface Amerbach. Similarly, as periodical literature began to assert itself as a political force, a number of now anonymous poets produced topical, specifically occasional verse.
- Occasional poetry is poetry composed for a particular occasion. In the history of literature, it is often studied in connection with orality, performance, and patronage. Goethe said that ' Occasional Poetry is the highest kind' ( Goethe in the Roman Campagna, 1786).
- I charmed a king, a congressman and an occasional aristocrat And then I got me a Georgia mansion and an elegant New York townhouse flat And I ain't done bad Now in this world there's a lot of self-righteous hypocrites That would call me bad They criticize Mama for turning me out No matter how little we had.
Verse, an occasional synonym for poetry; Verse (poetry), a metrical structure, a stanza Blank verse, a type of poetry having regular meter but no rhyme; Free verse, a type of poetry written without the use of strict meter or rhyme, but still recognized as poetry.
No. 3037: from A to B
You are invited take a song by Abba or the Beatles (please specify) and rewrite the lyrics as a sonnet. Email entries to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 21 February, please.
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Occasional Verse Definition Literature
Occasional poetry is poetry composed for a particular occasion. In the history of literature, it is often studied in connection with orality, performance, and patronage.
Term[edit]
As a term of literary criticism, 'occasional poetry' describes the work's purpose and the poet's relation to subject matter. It is not a genre, but several genres originate as occasional poetry, including epithalamia (wedding songs), dirges or funerary poems, paeans, and victory odes. Occasional poems may also be composed exclusive of or within any given set of genre conventions to commemorate single events or anniversaries, such as birthdays, foundings, or dedications.
Occasional poetry is often lyric because it originates as performance, in antiquity and into the 16th century even with musical accompaniment; at the same time, because performance implies an audience, its communal or public nature can place it in contrast with the intimacy or personal expression of emotion often associated with the term 'lyric'.[1]
Occasional Verse
Occasional poetry was a significant and even characteristic form of expression in ancient Greek and Roman culture, and has continued to play a prominent if sometimes aesthetically debased role throughout Western literature. Poets whose body of work features occasional poetry that stands among their highest literary achievements include Pindar, Horace, Ronsard, Jonson, Dryden, Milton, Goethe, Yeats, and Mallarmé.[2] The occasional poem (Frenchpièce d'occasion, GermanGelegenheitsgedichte) is also important in Persian, Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese literature, and its ubiquity among virtually all world literatures suggests the centrality of occasional poetry in the origin and development of poetry as an art form.
Goethe declared that 'Occasional Poetry is the highest kind,'[3] and Hegel gave it a central place in the philosophical examination of how poetry interacts with life:
Poetry's living connection with the real world and its occurrences in public and private affairs is revealed most amply in the so-called pièces d'occasion. If this description were given a wider sense, we could use it as a name for nearly all poetic works: but if we take it in the proper and narrower sense we have to restrict it to productions owing their origin to some single present event and expressly devoted to its exaltation, embellishment, commemoration, etc. But by such entanglement with life poetry seems again to fall into a position of dependence, and for this reason it has often been proposed to assign the whole sphere of pièces d'occasion an inferior value although to some extent, especially in lyric poetry, the most famous works belong to this class.'[4]
In the 19th and 20th centuries, newspapers in the United States often published occasional poems, and memorial poems for floods, train accidents, mine disasters and the like were frequently written as lyrics in ballad stanzas.[citation needed]
A high-profile example of a 21st century occasional poem is Elizabeth Alexander's 'Praise Song for the Day,' written for Barack Obama's 2009 US presidential inauguration, and read by the poet during the event to a television audience of around 38 million.[5] During the Inauguration of Joe Biden, poet Amanda Gorman read a occasional poem 'The Hill We Climb', she was noted as successful during her address.
See also[edit]
Define Occasional Verse In Literature
Selected bibliography[edit]
Occasional Verse In Literature
- Sugano, Marian Zwerling. The Poetics of the Occasion: Mallarmé and the Poetry of Circumstance. Stanford University Press, 1992. Limited preview online.
References[edit]
- ^Marian Zwerling Sugano, The Poetics of the Occasion (Stanford University Press, 1992), p. 5. For an example of literary criticism contrasting public occasional poetry with 'more intimate … lyric,' see Nanora Sweet and Julie Melnyk, Felicia Hemans: Reimagining Poetry in the 19th Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), p. 5 online.
- ^Sugano, The Poetics of the Occasion, p. 5.
- ^Quoted by David Herd, John Ashbery and American Poetry (Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), p. 54 online.
- ^Hegel as quoted by Sugano, The Poetics of the Occasion, p. 2.
- ^The audience for the televised inauguration averaged 37.8 million people; see Inauguration of Barack Obama: Television audience. The decision to include a poet was covered by media not normally devoted to contemporary poetry; background at Elizabeth Alexander.