In this episode, James Marriott and I discuss who we think are the best twenty English poets. This is not the best poets who wrote in English, but the best British poets (though James snuck Sylvia Plath onto his list…). We did it like that to make it easier, not least so we could base a lot of our discussion on extracts in The Oxford Book of English Verse (Ricks edition). Most of what we read out is from there. We read Wordsworth, Keats, Hardy, Milton, and Pope. We both love Pope! (He should be regarded as one of the very best English poets, like Milton.) There are also readings of Herrick, Bronte, Cowper, and MacNiece. I plan to record the whole of ‘The Eve of St. Agnes’ at some point soon.

Here are our lists and below is the transcript (which may have more errors than usual, sorry!)

HO

God Tier

* Shakespeare

“if not first, in the very first line”

* Chaucer

* Spenser

* Milton

* Wordsworth

* Eliot

—argue for Pope here, not usually included

Second Tier

* Donne

* Herbert

* Keats

* Dryden

* Gawain poet

* Tom O’Bedlam poet

Third Tier

* Yeats

* Tennyson

* Hopkins

* Coleridge

* Auden

* Shelley

* Marvell

JM

ShakespeareTier

* Shakespeare

Tier 1

* Chaucer

* Milton

* Wordsworth

Tier 2

* Donne

* Eliot

* Keats

* Tennyson

* Spencer

* Marvell

* Pope

Tier 3

* Yeats

* Hopkins

* Blake

* Coleridge

* Auden

* Shelley

* Thomas Hardy

* Larkin

* Plath

Henry: Today I'm talking to James Marriott, Times columnist, and more importantly, the writer of the Substack Cultural Capital. And we are going to argue about who are the best poets in the English language. James, welcome.

James: Thanks very much for having me. I feel I should preface my appearance so that I don't bring your podcast and disrepute saying that I'm maybe here less as an expert of poetry and more as somebody who's willing to have strong and potentially species opinions. I'm more of a lover of poetry than I would claim to be any kind of academic expert, just in case anybody thinks that I'm trying to produce any definitive answer to the question that we're tackling.

Henry: Yeah, no, I mean that's the same for me. We're not professors, we're just very opinionated boys. So we have lists.

James: We do.

Henry: And we're going to debate our lists, but what we do agree is that if we're having a top 20 English poets, Shakespeare is automatically in the God Tier and there's nothing to discuss.

James: Yeah, he's in a category of his own. I think the way of, because I guess the plan we've gone for is to rather than to rank them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 into sort of, what is it, three or four broad categories that we're competing over.

Henry: Yes, yes. Tiers

James: I think is a more kind of reasonable way to approach it rather than trying to argue exactly why it should be one place above Shelly or I don't know, whatever.

Henry: It's also just an excuse to talk about poets.

James: Yes.

Henry: Good. So then we have a sort of top tier, if not the first, in the very first line as it were, and you've got different people. To me, you've got Chaucer, Milton, and Wordsworth. I would also add Spenser and T.S. Eliot. So what's your problem with Spenser?

James: Well, my problem is ignorance in that it's a while since I've read the Fairy Queen, which I did at university. Partly is just that looking back through it now and from what I remember of university, I mean it is not so much that I have anything against Spenser. It's quite how much I have in favour of Milton and Wordsworth and Chaucer, and I'm totally willing to be argued against on this, but I just can't think that Spenser is in quite the same league as lovely as many passages of the Fairy Queen are.

Henry: So my case for Spenser is firstly, if you go through something like the Oxford Book of English Verse or some other comparable anthology, he's getting a similar page count to Shakespeare and Milton, he is important in that way. Second, it's not just the fairy queen, there's the Shepherd's Calendar, the sonnets, the wedding poems, and they're all highly accomplished. The Shepherd's Calendar particularly is really, really brilliant work. I think I enjoyed that more as an undergraduate, actually, much as I love the Fairy Queen. And the third thing is that the Fairy Queen is a very, very great epic. I mean, it's a tremendous accomplishment. There were lots of other epics knocking around in the 16th century that nobody wants to read now or I mean, obviously specialists want to read, but if we could persuade a few more people, a few more ordinary readers to pick up the fairy queen, they would love it.

James: Yes, and I was rereading before he came on air, the Bower of Bliss episode, which I think is from the second book, which is just a beautifully lush passage, passage of writing. It was really, I mean, you can see why Keats was so much influenced by it. The point about Spenser's breadth is an interesting one because Milton is in my top category below Shakespeare, but I think I'm placing him there pretty much only on the basis of Paradise Lost. I think if we didn't have Paradise Lost, Milton may not even be in this competition at all for me, very little. I know. I don’t know if this is a heresy, I've got much less time for Milton's minor works. There's Samuel Johnson pretty much summed up my feelings on Lycidas when he said there was nothing new. Whatever images it can supply are long ago, exhausted, and I do feel there's a certain sort of dryness to Milton's minor stuff. I mean, I can find things like Il Penseroso and L’Allegro pretty enough, but I mean, I think really the central achievement is Paradise Lost, whereas Spenser might be in contention, as you say, from if you didn't have the Fairy Queen, you've got Shepherd's Calendar, and all this other sort of other stuff, but Paradise Lost is just so massive for me.

Henry: But if someone just tomorrow came out and said, oh, we found a whole book of minor poetry by Virgil and it's all pretty average, you wouldn't say, oh, well Virgil's less of a great poet.

James: No, absolutely, and that's why I've stuck Milton right at the top. It's just sort of interesting how unbelievably good Paradise Lost is and how, in my opinion, how much less inspiring the stuff that comes after it is Samson Agonistes and Paradise Regained I really much pleasure out of at all and how, I mean the early I think slightly dry Milton is unbelievably accomplished, but Samuel Johnson seems to say in that quote is a very accomplished use of ancient slightly worn out tropes, and he's of putting together these old ideas in a brilliant manner and he has this sort of, I mean I guess he's one of your late bloomers. I can't quite remember how old he is when he publishes Paradise Lost.

Henry: Oh, he is. Oh, writing it in his fifties. Yeah.

James: Yeah, this just extraordinary thing that's totally unlike anything else in English literature and of all the poems that we're going to talk about, I think is the one that has probably given me most pleasure in my life and the one that I probably return to most often if not to read all the way through then to just go over my favourite bits and pieces of it.

Henry: A lot of people will think Milton is heavy and full of weird references to the ancient world and learned and biblical and not very readable for want of a better word. Can you talk us out of that? To be one of the great poets, they do have to have some readability, right?

James: Yeah, I think so, and it's certainly how I felt. I mean I think it's not a trivial objection to have to Milton. It's certainly how I found him. He was my special author paper at university and I totally didn't get on with him. There was something about his massive brilliance that I felt. I remember feeling like trying to write about Paradise Lost was trying to kind of scratch a huge block of marble with your nails. There's no way to get a handle on it. I just couldn't work out what to get ahold of, and it's only I think later in adulthood maybe reading him under a little less pressure that I've come to really love him. I mean, the thing I would always say to people to look out for in Milton, but it's his most immediate pleasure and the thing that still is what sends shivers done my spine about him is the kind of cosmic scale of Paradise Lost, and it's almost got this sort of sci-fi massiveness to it. One of my very favourite passages, which I may inflict on you, we did agree that we could inflict poetry on one another.

Henry: Please, please

James: It’s a detail from the first book of Paradise Lost. Milton's talking about Satan's architect in hell Mulciber, and this is a little explanation of who or part of his explanation of who Mulciber is, and he says,

Nor was his name unheard or unadoredIn ancient Greece; and in Ausonian landMen called him Mulciber; and how he fellFrom Heaven they fabled, thrown by angry JoveSheer o’er the crystal battlements: from mornTo noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,A summer’s day, and with the setting sunDropt from the zenith, like a falling star,On Lemnos, th’ Aegaean isle. Thus they relate,Erring

I just think it's the sort of total massiveness of that universe that “from the zenith to like a falling star”. I just can't think of any other poet in English or that I've ever read in any language, frankly, even in translation, who has that sort of scale about it, and I think that's what can most give immediate pleasure. The other thing I love about that passage is this is part of the kind of grandeur of Milton is that you get this extraordinary passage about an angel falling from heaven down to th’ Aegean Isle who's then going to go to hell and the little parenthetic remark at the end, the perm just rolls on, thus they relate erring and paradise lost is such this massive grand thing that it can contain this enormous cosmic tragedy as a kind of little parenthetical thing. I also think the crystal battlements are lovely, so wonderful kind of sci-fi detail.

Henry: Yes, I think that's right, and I think it's under appreciated that Milton was a hugely important influence on Charles Darwin who was a bit like you always rereading it when he was young, especially on the beagle voyage. He took it with him and quotes it in his letters sometimes, and it is not insignificant the way that paradise loss affects him in terms of when he writes his own epic thinking at this level, thinking at this scale, thinking at the level of the whole universe, how does the whole thing fit together? What's the order behind the little movements of everything? So Milton's reach I think is actually quite far into the culture even beyond the poets.

James: That's fascinating. Do you have a particular favourite bit of Paradise Lost?

Henry: I do, but I don't have it with me because I disorganised and couldn't find my copy.

James: That's fair.

Henry: What I want to do is to read one of the sonnets because I do think he's a very, very good sonnet writer, even if I'm going to let the Lycidas thing go, because I'm not going to publicly argue against Samuel Johnson.

When I consider how my light is spent,Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,And that one Talent which is death to hideLodged with me useless, though my Soul more bentTo serve therewith my Maker, and presentMy true account, lest he returning chide;“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”I fondly ask. But patience, to preventThat murmur, soon replies, “God doth not needEither man’s work or his own gifts; who bestBear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His stateIs Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speedAnd post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:They also serve who only stand and wait.”

I think that's great.

James: Yeah. Okay. It is good.

Henry: Yeah. I think the minor poems are very uneven, but there are lots of gems.

James: Yeah, I mean he is a genius. It would be very weird if all the minor poems were s**t, which is not really what I'm trying… I guess I have a sort of slightly austere category too. I just do Chaucer, Milton, Wordsworth, but we are agreed on Wordsworth, aren't we? That he belongs here.

Henry: So my feeling is that the story of English poetry is something like Chaucer Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, T.S. Eliot create a kind of spine. These are the great innovators. They're writing the major works, they're the most influential. All the cliches are true. Chaucer invented iambic pentameter. Shakespeare didn't single handedly invent modern English, but he did more than all the rest of them put together. Milton is the English Homer. Wordsworth is the English Homer, but of the speech of the ordinary man. All these old things, these are all true and these are all colossal achievements and I don't really feel that we should be picking between them. I think Spenser wrote an epic that stands alongside the works of Shakespeare and Milton in words with T.S. Eliot whose poetry, frankly I do not love in the way that I love some of the other great English writers cannot be denied his position as one of the great inventors.

James: Yeah, I completely agree. It's funny, I think, I mean I really do love T.S. Eliot. Someone else had spent a lot of time rereading. I'm not quite sure why he hasn't gone into quite my top category, but I think I had this—

Henry: Is it because he didn't like Milton and you're not having it?

James: Maybe that's part of it. I think my thought something went more along the lines of if I cut, I don't quite feel like I'm going to put John Donne in the same league as Milton, but then it seems weird to put Eliot above Donne and then I don't know that, I mean there's not a very particularly fleshed out thought, but on Wordsworth, why is Wordsworth there for you? What do you think, what do you think are the perms that make the argument for Wordsworth having his place at the very top?

Henry: Well, I think the Lyrical Ballads, Poems in Two Volumes and the Prelude are all of it, aren't they? I'm not a lover of the rest, and I think the preface to the Lyrical Ballads is one of the great works of literary criticism, which is another coin in his jar if you like, but in a funny way, he's much more revolutionary than T.S. Eliot. We think of modernism as the great revolution and the great sort of bringing of all the newness, but modernism relies on Wordsworth so much, relies on the idea that tradition can be subsumed into ordinary voice, ordinary speech, the passage in the Wasteland where he has all of them talking in the bar. Closing time please, closing time please. You can't have that without Wordsworth and—

James: I think I completely agree with what you're saying.

Henry: Yeah, so I think that's for me is the basis of it that he might be the great innovator of English poetry.

James: Yeah, I think you're right because I've got, I mean again, waiting someone out of my depth here, but I can't think of anybody else who had sort of specifically and perhaps even ideologically set out to write a kind of high poetry that sounded like ordinary speech, I guess. I mean, Wordsworth again is somebody who I didn't particularly like at university and I think it's precisely about plainness that can make him initially off-putting. There's a Matthew Arnold quote where he says of Wordsworth something like He has no style.

Henry: Such a Matthew Arnold thing to say.

James: I mean think it's the beginning of an appreciation, but there's a real blankness to words with I think again can almost mislead you into thinking there's nothing there when you first encounter him. But yeah, I think for me, Tintern Abbey is maybe the best poem in the English language.

Henry: Tintern Abbey is great. The Intimations of Immortality Ode is superb. Again, I don't have it with me, but the Poems in Two Volumes. There are so many wonderful things in there. I had a real, when I was an undergraduate, I had read some Wordsworth, but I hadn't really read a lot and I thought of I as you do as the daffodils poet, and so I read Lyrical Ballads and Poems in Two Volumes, and I had one of these electrical conversion moments like, oh, the daffodils, that is nothing. The worst possible thing for Wordsworth is that he's remembered as this daffodils poet. When you read the Intimations of Immortality, do you just think of all the things he could have been remembered for? It's diminishing.

James: It's so easy to get into him wrong because the other slightly wrong way in is through, I mean maybe this is a prejudice that isn't widely shared, but the stuff that I've never particularly managed to really enjoy is all the slightly worthy stuff about beggars and deformed people and maimed soldiers. Wandering around on roads in the lake district has always been less appealing to me, and that was maybe why I didn't totally get on with 'em at first, and I mean, there's some bad words with poetry. I was looking up the infamous lines from the form that were mocked even at the time where you know the lines that go,

You see a little muddy pond Of water never dry. I've measured it from side to side, ’Tis three feet long and two feet wide,

and the sort of plainness condescend into banality at Wordsworth's worst moments, which come more frequently later in his career.

Henry: Yes, yes. I'm going to read a little bit of the Intimations ode because I want to share some of this so-called plainness at its best. This is the third section. They're all very short

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,And while the young lambs boundAs to the tabor's sound,To me alone there came a thought of grief:A timely utterance gave that thought relief,And I again am strong:The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,And all the earth is gay;Land and seaGive themselves up to jollity,And with the heart of MayDoth every Beast keep holiday;—Thou Child of Joy,Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy.

And I think it's unthinkable that someone would write like this today. It would be cringe, but we're going to have a new sincerity. It's coming. It's in some ways it's already here and I think Wordsworth will maybe get a different sort of attention when that happens because that's a really high level of writing to be able to do that without it descending into what you just read. In the late Wordsworth there's a lot of that really bad stuff.

James: Yeah, I mean the fact that he wrote some of that bad stuff I guess is a sign of quite how carefully the early stuff is treading that knife edge of tripping into banality. Can I read you my favourite bit of Tintern Abbey?

Henry: Oh yes. That is one of the great poems.

James: Yeah, I just think one of mean I, the most profound poem ever, probably for me. So this is him looking out over the landscape of Tinton Abbey. I mean these are unbelievably famous lines, so I'm sure everybody listening will know them, but they are so good

And I have feltA presence that disturbs me with the joyOf elevated thoughts; a sense sublimeOf something far more deeply interfused,Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,And the round ocean and the living air,And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:A motion and a spirit, that impelsAll thinking things, all objects of all thought,And rolls through all things. Therefore am I stillA lover of the meadows and the woodsAnd mountains; and of all that we beholdFrom this green earth; of all the mighty worldOf eye, and ear,—both what they half create,And what perceive; well pleased to recogniseIn nature and the language of the senseThe anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soulOf all my moral being.

I mean in a poem, it's just that is mind blowingly good to me?

Henry: Yeah. I'm going to look up another section from the Prelude, which used to be in the Oxford Book, but it isn't in the Ricks edition and I don't really know why

James: He doesn't have much of the Prelude does he?

Henry: I don't think he has any…

James: Yeah.

Henry: So this is from an early section when the young Wordsworth is a young boy and he's going off, I think he's sneaking out at night to row on the lake as you do when you with Wordsworth, and the initial description is of a mountain.

She was an elfin pinnace; lustilyI dipped my oars into the silent lake,And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boatWent heaving through the water like a swan;When, from behind that craggy steep till thenThe horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge,As if with voluntary power instinct,Upreared its head. I struck and struck again,And growing still in stature the grim shapeTowered up between me and the stars, and still,For so it seemed, with purpose of its ownAnd measured motion like a living thing,Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned,And through the silent water stole my wayBack to the covert of the willow tree;

It's so much like that in Wordsworth. It's just,

James: Yeah, I mean, yeah, the Prelude is full of things like that. I think that is probably one of the best moments, possibly the best moments of the prelude. But yeah, I mean it's just total genius isn't it?

Henry: I think he's very, very important and yeah, much more important than T.S. Eliot who is, I put him in the same category, but I can see why you didn't.

James: You do have a little note saying Pope, question mark or something I think, don't you, in the document.

Henry: So the six I gave as the spine of English literature and everything, that's an uncontroversial view. I think Pope should be one of those people. I think we should see Pope as being on a level with Milton and Wordsworth, and I think he's got a very mixed reputation, but I think he was just as inventive, just as important. I think you are a Pope fan, just as clever, just as moving, and it baffles me that he's not more commonly regarded as part of this great spine running through the history of English literature and between Milton and Wordsworth. If you don't have Pope, I think it's a missing link if you like.

James: I mean, I wouldn't maybe go as far as you, I love Pope. Pope was really the first perch I ever loved. I remember finding a little volume of Pope in a box of books. My school library was chucking out, and that was the first book of poetry I read and took seriously. I guess he sort of suffers by the fact that we are seeing all of this through the lens of the romantics. All our taste about Shakespeare and Milton and Spenser has been formed by the romantics and hope's way of writing the Satires. This sort of society poetry I think is just totally doesn't conform to our idea of what poetry should be doing or what poetry is. Is there absolutely or virtually nobody reads Dryden nowadays. It's just not what we think poetry is for that whole Augustine 18th century idea that poetry is for writing epistles to people to explain philosophical concepts to them or to diss your enemies and rivals or to write a kind of Duncia explaining why everyone you know is a moron. That's just really, I guess Byron is the last major, is the only of figure who is in that tradition who would be a popular figure nowadays with things like English bards and scotch reviewers. But that whole idea of poetry I think was really alien to us. And I mean I'm probably formed by that prejudice because I really do love Pope, but I don't love him as much as the other people we've discussed.

Henry: I think part of his problem is that he's clever and rational and we want our poems always to be about moods, which may be, I think why George Herbert, who we've both got reasonably high is also quite underrated. He's very clever. He's always think George Herbert's always thinking, and when someone like Shakespeare or Milton is thinking, they do it in such a way that you might not notice and that you might just carry on with the story. And if you do see that they're thinking you can enjoy that as well. Whereas Pope is just explicitly always thinking and maybe lecturing, hectoring, being very grand with you and as you say, calling you an idiot. But there are so many excellent bits of Pope and I just think technically he can sustain a thought or an argument over half a dozen or a dozen lines and keep the rhyme scheme moving and it's never forced, and he never has to do that thing where he puts the words in a stupid order just to make the rhyme work. He's got such an elegance and a balance of composition, which again, as you say, we live under romantic ideals, not classical ones. But that doesn't mean we should be blind to the level of his accomplishment, which is really, really very high. I mean, Samuel Johnson basically thought that Alexander Pope had finished English poetry. We have the end of history. He had the end of English poetry. Pope, he's brought us to the mightiest of the heroic couplers and he's done it. It's all over.

James: The other thing about Pope that I think makes us underrate him is that he's very charming. And I think charm is a quality we're not big on is that sort of, but I think some of Pope's charm is so moving. One of my favourite poems of his is, do you know the Epistle to Miss Blount on going into the country? The poem to the young girl who's been having a fashionable season in London then is sent to the boring countryside to stay with an aunt. And it's this, it's not like a romantic love poem, it's not distraught or hectic. It's just a sort of wonderful act of sympathy with this potentially slightly airheaded young girl who's been sent to the countryside, which you'd rather go to operas and plays and flirt with people. And there's a real sort of delicate in it that isn't overblown and isn't dramatic, but is extremely charming. And I think that's again, another quality that perhaps we're prone not to totally appreciate in the 21st century. It's almost the kind of highest form of politeness and sympathy

Henry: And the prevailing quality in Pope is wit: “True wit is nature to advantage dressed/ What often was thought, but ne’er so well expressed”. And I think wit can be quite alienating for an audience because it is a kind of superior form of literary art. This is why people don't read as much Swift as he deserves because he's so witty and so scornful that a lot of people will read him and think, well, I don't like you.

James: And that point about what oft was thought and ne’er so well expressed again, is a very classical idea. The poet who puts not quite conventional wisdom, but something that's been thought before in the best possible words, really suffers with the romantic idea of originality. The poet has to say something utterly new. Whereas for Pope, the sort of ideas that he express, some of the philosophical ideas are not as profound in original perhaps as words with, but he's very elegant proponent of them.

Henry: And we love b******g people in our culture, and I feel like the Dunciad should be more popular because it is just, I can't remember who said this, but someone said it's probably the most under appreciated great poem in English, and that's got to be true. It's full of absolute zingers. There's one moment where he's described the whole crowd of them or all these poets who he considers to be deeply inferior, and it turns out he was right because no one reads them anymore. And you need footnotes to know who they are. I mean, no one cares. And he says, “equal your merits, equal is your din”. This kind of abuse is a really high art, and we ought to love that. We love that on Twitter. And I think things like the Rape of the Lock also could be more popular.

James: I love the Rape of the Lock . I mean, I think anybody is not reading Pope and is looking for a way in, I think the Rape of the Lock is the way in, isn't it? Because it's just such a charming, lovely, funny poem.

Henry: It is. And probably it suffers because the whole idea of mock heroic now is lost to us. But it's a bit like it's the literary equivalent of people writing a sort of mini epic about someone like Elon Musk or some other very prominent figure in the culture and using lots of heroic imagery from the great epics of Homer and Virgil and from the Bible and all these things, but putting them into a very diminished state. So instead of being grand, it becomes comic. It's like turning a God into a cartoon. And Pope is easily the best writer that we have for that kind of thing. Dryden, but he's the genius on it.

James: Yeah, no, he totally is. I guess it's another reason he's under appreciated is that our culture is just much less worshipful of epic than the 18th century culture was. The 18th century was obsessed with trying to write epics and trying to imitate epics. I mean, I think to a lot of Pope's contemporaries, the achievement they might've been expecting people to talk about in 300 years time would be his translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey and the other stuff might've seen more minor in comparison, whereas it's the mock epic that we're remembering him for, which again is perhaps another symptom of our sort of post romantic perspective.

Henry: I think this is why Spenser suffers as well, because everything in Spenser is magical. The knights are fairies, not the little fairies that live in buttercups, but big human sized fairies or even bigger than that. And there are magical women and saucers and the whole thing is a sort of hodgepodge of romance and fairy tale and legend and all this stuff. And it's often said, oh, he was old fashioned in his own time. But those things still had a lot of currency in the 16th century. And a lot of those things are in Shakespeare, for example.

But to us, that's like a fantasy novel. Now, I love fantasy and I read fantasy, and I think some of it's a very high accomplishment, but to a lot of people, fantasy just means kind of trash. Why am I going to read something with fairies and a wizard? And I think a lot of people just see Spenser and they're like, what is this? This is so weird. They don't realise how Protestant they're being, but they're like, this is so weird.

James: And Pope has a little, I mean, the Rape of the Lock even has a little of the same because the rape of the lock has this attendant army of good spirits called selfs and evil spirits called gnomes. I mean, I find that just totally funny and charming. I really love it.

Henry: I'm going to read, there's an extract from the Rape of the Lock in the Oxford Book, and I'm going to read a few lines to give people an idea of how he can be at once mocking something but also quite charming about it. It's quite a difficult line to draw. The Rape of the Lock is all about a scandalous incident where a young man took a lock of a lady's hair. Rape doesn't mean what we think it means. It means an offence. And so because he stole a lock of her hair, it'd become obviously this huge problem and everyone's in a flurry. And to sort of calm everyone down, Pope took it so seriously that he made it into a tremendous joke. So here he is describing the sort of dressing table if you like.

And now, unveil'd, the Toilet stands display'd,Each silver Vase in mystic order laid.First, rob'd in white, the Nymph intent adores,With head uncover'd, the Cosmetic pow'rs.A heav'nly image in the glass appears,To that she bends, to that her eyes she rears;Th' inferior Priestess, at her altar's side,Trembling begins the sacred rites of Pride.

What a way to describe someone putting on their makeup. It's fantastic.

James: It's funny. I can continue that because the little passage of Pope I picked to read begins exactly where yours ended. It only gets better as it goes on, I think. So after trembling begins the sacred rites of pride,

Unnumber'd treasures ope at once, and hereThe various off'rings of the world appear;From each she nicely culls with curious toil,And decks the Goddess with the glitt'ring spoil.This casket India's glowing gems unlocks,And all Arabia breathes from yonder box.The Tortoise here and Elephant unite,Transformed to combs, the speckled, and the white.Here files of pins extend their shining rows,Puffs, Powders, Patches, Bibles, Billet-doux.

It's just so lovely. I love a thing about the tortoise and the elephant unite because you've got a tortoise shell and an ivory comb. And the stuff about India's glowing gems and Arabia breathing from yonder box, I mean that's a, realistic is not quite the word, but that's a reference to Milton because Milton is continually having all the stones of Arabia and India's pearls and things all screwed through paradise lost. Yeah, it's just so lovely, isn't it?

Henry: And for someone who's so classical and composed and elegant, there's something very Dickensian about things like the toilet, the tortoise and the elephant here unite, transform to combs. There's something a little bit surreal and the puffs, powders, patches, bibles, it has that sort of slightly hectic, frantic,

James: That's sort of Victorian materialism, wealth of material objects,

Henry: But also that famous thing that was said of Dickens, that the people are furniture and the furniture's like people. He can bring to life all the little bits and bobs of the ordinary day and turn it into something not quite ridiculous, not quite charming.

James: And there is a kind of charm in the fact that it wasn't the sort of thing that poets would necessarily expect to pay attention to the 18th century. I don't think the sort of powders and ointments on a woman's dressing table. And there's something very sort of charming in his condescension to notice or what might've once seemed his condescension to notice those things, to find a new thing to take seriously, which is what poetry or not quite to take seriously, but to pay attention to, which I guess is one of the things that great perch should always be doing.

Henry: When Swift, who was Pope's great friend, wrote about this, he wrote a poem called A Beautiful Young Lady Going to Bed, which is not as good, and I would love to claim Swift on our list, but I really can't.

James: It's quite a horrible perm as well, that one, isn't it?

Henry: It is. But it shows you how other people would treat the idea of the woman in front of her toilet, her mirror. And Swift uses an opportunity, as he said, to “lash the vice” because he hated all this adornment and what he would think of as the fakery of a woman painting herself. And so he talks about Corina pride of Drury Lane, which is obviously an ironic reference to her being a Lady of the Night, coming back and there's no drunken rake with her.

Returning at the midnight hour;Four stories climbing to her bow’r;Then, seated on a three-legged chair,Takes off her artificial hair:Now, picking out a crystal eye,She wipes it clean, and lays it by.Her eye-brows from a mouse’s hide,Stuck on with art on either side,Pulls off with care, and first displays ’em,Then in a play-book smoothly lays ’em.Now dexterously her plumpers draws,That serve to fill her hollow jaws.

And it goes on like this. I mean, line after this is sort of raw doll quality to it, Pope, I think in contrast, it only illuminates him more to see where others are taking this kind of crude, very, very funny and witty, but very crude approach. He's able to really have the classical art of balance.

James: Yes. And it's precisely his charm that he can mock it and sympathise and love it at the same time, which I think is just a more sort of complex suite of poetic emotions to have about that thing.

Henry: So we want more people to read Pope and to love Pope.

James: Yes. Even if I'm not letting him into my top.

Henry: You are locking him out of the garden. Now, for the second tier, I want to argue for two anonymous poets. One of the things we did when we were talking about this was we asked chatGPT to see if it could give us a good answer. And if you use o1 or o1 Pro, it gives you a pretty good answer as to who the best poets in English are. But it has to be told that it's forgotten about the anonymous poets. And then it says, oh, that was stupid. There are quite a lot of good anonymous poets in English, but I suspect a lot of us, a lot of non artificial intelligence when thinking about this question overlook the anonymous poets. But I would think the Gawain poet and the Tom O’ Bedlam poet deserve to be in here. I don’t know what you think about that.

James: I'm not competent to provide an opinion. I'm purely here to be educated on the subject of these anonymous poets.

Henry: The Gawain poet, he's a mediaeval, assume it's a he, a mediaeval writer, obviously may well not be a man, a mediaeval writer. And he wrote Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, which is, if you haven't read it, you should really read it in translation first, I think because it's written at the same time as Chaucer. But Chaucer was written in a kind of London dialect, which is what became the English we speak. And so you can read quite a lot of Chaucer and the words look pretty similar and sometimes you need the footnotes, but when you read Gawain and The Green Knight, it's in a Northwestern dialect, which very much did not become modern day English. And so it's a bit more baffling, but it is a poem of tremendous imaginative power and weirdness. It's a very compelling story. We have a children's version here written by Selena Hastings who's a very accomplished biographer. And every now and then my son remembers it and he just reads it again and again and again. It's one of the best tales of King Arthur in his knights. And there's a wonderful book by John Burrow. It's a very short book, but that is such a loving piece of criticism that explicates the way in which that poem promotes virtue and all the nightly goodness that you would expect, but also is a very strange and unreal piece of work. And I think it has all the qualities of great poetry, but because it's written in this weird dialect, I remember as an undergraduate thinking, why is this so bloody difficult to read? But it is just marvellous. And I see people on Twitter, the few people who've read it, they read it again and they just say, God, it's so good. And I think there was a film of it a couple of years ago, but we will gloss lightly over that and not encourage you to do the film instead of the book.

James: Yeah, you're now triggering a memory that I was at least set to read and perhaps did at least read part of Gawain and the Green Knight at University, but has not stuck to any brain cells at all.

Henry: Well, you must try it again and tell me what you think. I mean, I find it easily to be one of the best poems in English.

James: Yeah, no, I should. I had a little Chaucer kick recently actually, so maybe I'm prepared to rediscover mediaeval per after years of neglect since my degree,

Henry: And it's quite short, which I always think is worth knowing. And then the Tom Bedlam is an anonymous poem from I think the 17th century, and it's one of the mad songs, so it's a bit like the Fool from King Lear. And again, it is a very mysterious, very strange and weird piece of work. Try and find it in and read the first few lines. And I think because it's anonymous, it's got slightly less of a reputation because it can't get picked up with some big name, but it is full of tremendous power. And again, I think it would be sad if it wasn't more well known.

From the hag and hungry goblinThat into rags would rend ye,The spirit that stands by the naked manIn the Book of Moons defend ye,That of your five sound sensesYou never be forsaken,Nor wander from your selves with TomAbroad to beg your bacon,While I do sing, Any food, any feeding,Feeding, drink, or clothing;Come dame or maid, be not afraid,Poor Tom will injure nothing.

Anyway, so you get the sense of it and it's got many stanzas and it's full of this kind of energy and it's again, very accomplished. It can carry the thought across these long lines and these long stanzas.

James: When was it written? I'm aware of only if there's a name in the back of my mind.

Henry: Oh, it's from the 17th century. So it's not from such a different time as King Lear, but it's written in the voice of a madman. And again, you think of that as the sort of thing a romantic poet would do. And it's strange to find it almost strange to find it displaced. There were these other mad songs. But I think because it's anonymous, it gets less well known, it gets less attention. It's not part of a bigger body of work, but it's absolutely, I think it's wonderful.

James: I shall read it.

Henry: So who have you got? Who else? Who are you putting in instead of these two?

James: Hang on. So we're down to tier two now.

Henry: Tier two.

James: Yeah. So my tier two is: Donne, Elliot, Keats, Tennyson. I've put Spenser in tier two, Marvell and Pope, who we've already discussed. I mean, I think Eliot, we've talked about, I mean Donne just speaks for himself and there's probably a case that some people would make to bump him up a tier.

Henry: Anybody can read that case in Katherine Rudell’s book. We don't need to…

James: Yes, exactly. If anybody's punching perhaps in tier two, it's Tennyson who I wasn't totally sure belonged there. Putting Tenon in the same tier as Donne and Spenser and Keets. I wonder if that's a little ambitious. I think that might raise eyebrows because there is a school of thought, which I'm not totally unsympathetic to this. What's the Auden quote about Tennyson? I really like it. I expressed very harshly, but I sort of get what he means. Auden said that Tennyson “had the finest ear perhaps of any English poet who was also undoubtedly the stupidest. There was little that he didn't know. There was little else that he did.” Which is far too harsh. But I mentioned to you earlier that I think was earlier this year, a friend and I had a project where we were going to memorise a perva week was a plan. We ended up basically getting, I think three quarters of the way through.

And if there's a criticism of Tennyson that you could make, it's that the word music and the sheer lushness of phrases sometimes becomes its own momentum. And you can end up with these extremely lovely but sometimes slightly empty beautiful phrases, which is what I ended up feeling about Tithonus. And I sort of slightly felt I was memorising this unbelievably beautiful but ever so slightly hollow thing. And that was slightly why the project fell apart, I should say. Of course, they absolutely love Tennyson. He's one of my all time favourite poets, which is why my personal favouritism has bumped him up into that category. But I can see there's a case, and I think to a lot of people, he's just the kind of Victorian establishment gloom man, which is totally unfair, but there's not no case against Tennyson.

Henry: Yeah, the common thing is that he has no ideas. I don't know if that's true or not. I'm also, I'm not sure how desperately important it is. It should be possible to be a great poet without ideas being at the centre of your work. If you accept the idea that the essence of poetry is invention, i.e. to say old things in a fantastically new way, then I think he qualifies very well as a great poet.

James: Yes..

Henry: Well, very well. I think Auden said what he said because he was anxious that it was true of himself.

James: Yeah, I mean there's a strong argument that Auden had far too many ideas and the sorts of mad schemes and fantastical theories about history that Auden spent his spare time chasing after is certainly a kind of argument that poets maybe shouldn't have as many ideas, although it's just reading. Seamus Perry's got a very good little book on Tennyson, and the opening chapter is all about arguments about people who have tended to dislike Tennyson. And there are all kinds of embarrassing anecdotes about the elderly Tennyson trying to sort of go around dinner parties saying profound and sage-like things and totally putting his foot in it and saying things are completely banal. I should have made a note that this was sort of slightly, again, intensifying my alarm about is there occasionally a tinsely hollowness about Tennyson. I'm now being way too harsh about one of my favourite poets—

Henry: I think it depends what you mean by ideas. He is more than just a poet of moods. He gives great expression, deep and strongly felt expression to a whole way of being and a whole way of conceiving of things. And it really was a huge part of why people became interested in the middle ages in the 19th century. I think there's Walter Scott and there's Tennyson who are really leading that work, and that became a dominant cultural force and it became something that meant a lot to people. And whether or not, I don't know whether it's the sort of idea that we're talking about, but I think that sort of thing, I think that qualifies as having ideas and think again, I think he's one of the best writers about the Arthurian legend. Now that work doesn't get into the Oxford Book of English Verse, maybe that's fair. But I think it was very important and I love it. I love it. And I find Tennyson easy to memorise, which is another point in his favour.

James: Yeah.

Henry: I'm going to read a little bit of Ulysses, which everyone knows the last five or six lines of that poem because it gets put into James Bond films and other such things. I'm going to read it from a little bit from earlier on.

I am become a name;For always roaming with a hungry heartMuch have I seen and known; cities of menAnd manners, climates, councils, governments,Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;And drunk delight of battle with my peers,Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.I am a part of all that I have met;Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fadesFor ever and for ever when I move.

I think that's amazing. And he can do that. He can do lots and lots and lots of that.

James: Yeah, he really can. It's stunning. “Far on the ringing planes of windy Troy” is such an unbelievably evocative phrase.

Henry: And that's what I mean. He's got this ability to bring back a sort of a whole mood of history. It's not just personal mood poetry. He can take you into these places and that is in the space of a line. In the space of a line. I think Matthew Arnold said of the last bit of what I just read is that he had this ability in Ulysses to make the lines seem very long and slow and to give them this kind of epic quality that far goes far beyond the actual length of that poem. Ulysses feels like this huge poem that's capturing so much of Homer and it's a few dozen lines.

James: Yeah, no, I completely agree. Can I read a little bit of slightly more domestic Tennyson, from In Memoriam, I think his best poem and one of my all time favourite poems and it's got, there are many sort of famous lines on grief and things, but there's little sort of passage of natural description I think quite near the beginning that I've always really loved and I've always just thought was a stunning piece of poetry in terms of its sound and the way that the sound has patented and an unbelievably attentive description natural world, which is kind of the reason that even though I think Keats is a better poet, I do prefer reading Tennyson to Keats, so this is from the beginning of In Memoriam.

Calm is the morn without a sound,Calm as to suit a calmer grief,And only thro’ the faded leafThe chesnut pattering to the ground:

Calm and deep peace on this high wold,And on these dews that drench the furze,And all the silvery gossamersThat twinkle into green and gold:

Calm and still light on yon great plainThat sweeps with all its autumn bowers,And crowded farms and lessening towers,To mingle with the bounding main:

And I just think that's an amazing piece of writing that takes you from that very close up image that it begins with of the “chestnut patterning to the ground” through the faded leaves of the tree, which is again, a really attentive little bit of natural description. I think anyone can picture the way that a chestnut might fall through the leaves of a chestnut tree, and it's just an amazing thing to notice. And I think the chestnut pattern to the ground does all the kind of wonderful, slightly onomatopoeic, Tennyson stuff so well, but by the end, you're kind of looking out over the English countryside, you've seen dew on the firs, and then you're just looking out across the plane to the sea, and it's this sort of, I just think it's one of those bits of poetry that anybody who stood in a slightly wet and romantic day in the English countryside knows exactly the feeling that he's evoking. And I mean there's no bit of—all of In Memoriam is pretty much that good. That's not a particularly celebrated passage I don't think. It's just wonderful everywhere.

Henry: Yes. In Memoriam a bit like the Dunciad—under appreciated relative to its huge merits.

James: Yeah, I think it sounds, I mean guess by the end of his life, Tennyson had that reputation as the establishment sage of Victorian England, queen of Victoria's favourite poet, which is a pretty off-putting reputation for to have. And I think In Memoriam is supposed to be this slightly cobwebby, musty masterpiece of Victorian grief. But there was just so much, I mean, gorgeous, beautiful sensuous poetry in it.

Henry: Yeah, lots of very intense feelings. No, I agree. I have Tennyson my third tier because I had to have the Gawain poet, but I agree that he's very, very great.

James: Yeah, I think the case for third tier is I'm very open to that case for the reasons that I said.

Henry: Keats, we both have Keats much higher than Shelly. I think Byron's not on anyone's list because who cares about Byron. Overrated, badly behaved. Terrible jokes. Terrible jokes.

James: I think people often think Byron's a better pert without having read an awful lot of the poetry of Byron. But I think anybody who's tried to wade through long swathes of Don Juan or—

Henry: My God,

James: Childe Harold, has amazing, amazing, beautiful moments. But yeah, there's an awful lot of stuff that you don't enjoy. I think.

Henry: So to make the case for Keats, I want to talk about The Eve of St. Agnes, which I don’t know about you, but I love The Eve of St. Agnes. I go back to it all the time. I find it absolutely electric.

James: I'm going to say that Keats is a poet, which is kind of weird for somebody is sent to us and obviously beautiful as Keats. I sort of feel like I admire more than I love. I get why he's brilliant. It's very hard not to see why he's brilliant, but he's someone I would very rarely sit down and read for fun and somebody got an awful lot of feeling or excitement out of, but that's clearly a me problem, not a Keats problem.

Henry: When I was a teenager, I knew so much Keats by heart. I knew the whole of the Ode to a Nightingale. I mean, I was absolutely steeped in it morning, noon and night. I couldn't get over it. And now I don’t know if I could get back to that point. He was a very young poet and he writes in a very young way. But I'm going to read—The Eve of St. Agnes is great. It's a narrative poem, which I think is a good way to get into this stuff because the story is fantastic. And he had read Spenser, he was part of this kind of the beginning of this mediaeval revival. And he's very interested in going back to those old images, those old stories. And this is the bit, I think everything we're reading is from the Oxford Book of English Verse, so that if people at home want to read along they can.

This is when the heroine of the poem is Madeline is making her escape basically. And I think this is very, very exciting.

Her falt'ring hand upon the balustrade,Old Angela was feeling for the stair,When Madeline, St. Agnes' charmed maid,Rose, like a mission'd spirit, unaware:With silver taper's light, and pious care,She turn'd, and down the aged gossip ledTo a safe level matting. Now prepare,Young Porphyro, for gazing on that bed;She comes, she comes again, like ring-dove fray'd and fled.

Out went the taper as she hurried in;Its little smoke, in pallid moonshine, died:She clos'd the door, she panted, all akinTo spirits of the air, and visions wide:No uttered syllable, or, woe betide!But to her heart, her heart was voluble,Paining with eloquence her balmy side;As though a tongueless nightingale should swellHer throat in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell.

A casement high and triple-arch'd there was,All garlanded with carven imag'riesOf fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,And diamonded with panes of quaint device,Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings;And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries,And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings,A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens and kings.

I mean, so much atmosphere, so much tension, so many wonderful images just coming one after the other. The rapidity of it, the tumbling nature of it. And people often quote the Ode to autumn, which has a lot of that.

James: I have to say, I found that totally enchanting. And perhaps my problem is that I need you to read it all to me. You can make an audio book that I can listen to.

Henry: I honestly, I actually might read the whole of the E and put it out as audio on Substack because

James: I would actually listen to that.

Henry: I love it so much. And I feel like it gets, when we talk about Keats, we talk about, On First Looking into Chapman's Homer and Bright Star and La Belle Dame Sans Merci, and these are great, great poems and they're poems that we do at school Ode to a Nightingale because I think The Great Gatsby has a big debt to Ode to a Nightingale, doesn't it? And obviously everyone quotes the Ode to Autumn. I mean, as far as I can tell, the 1st of October every year is the whole world sharing the first stands of the Ode to Autumn.

James: Yeah. He may be one of the people who suffers from over familiarity perhaps. And I think also because it sounds so much what poetry is supposed to sound like, because so much of our idea of poetry derives from Keats. Maybe that's something I've slightly need to get past a little bit.

Henry: But if you can get into the complete works, there are many, the bit I just read is I think quite representative.

James: I loved it. I thought it was completely beautiful and I would never have thought to ever, I probably can't have read that poem for years. I wouldn't have thought to read it. Since university, I don't think

Henry: He's one of those people. All of my copies of him are sort of frayed and the spines are breaking, but the book is wearing out. I should just commit it to memory and be done. But somehow I love going back to it. So Keats is very high in my estimation, and we've both put him higher than Shelly and Coleridge.

James: Yeah.

Henry: Tell me why. Because those would typically, I think, be considered the superior poets.

James: Do you think Shelly? I think Keats would be considered the superior poet

Henry: To Shelly?

James: Certainly, yes. I think to Shelly and Coleridge, that's where current fashion would place them. I mean, I have to say Coleridge is one of my all time favourite poets. In terms of people who had just every so often think, I'd love to read a poem, I'd love to read Frost at Midnight. I'd love to read the Aeolian Harp. I'd love to read This Lime Tree Bower, My Prison. I'd love to read Kubla Khan. Outside Milton, Coleridge is probably the person that I read most, but I think, I guess there's a case that Coleridge's output is pretty slight. What his reputation rest on is The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, the conversation poems, which a lot of people think are kind of plagiarised Wordsworth, at least in their style and tone, and then maybe not much else. Does anybody particularly read Cristabel and get much out of it nowadays? Dejection an Ode people like: it’s never done an awful lot for me, so I sort of, in my personal Pantheon Coleridge is at the top and he's such an immensely sympathetic personality as well and such a curious person. But I think he's a little slight, and there's probably nothing in Coleridge that can match that gorgeous passage of Keats that you read. I think.

Henry: Yeah, that's probably true. He's got more ideas, I guess. I don't think it matters that he's slight. Robert Frost said something about his ambition had been to lodge five or six poems in the English language, and if he'd done that, he would've achieved greatness. And obviously Frost very much did do that and is probably the most quotable and well-known poet. But I think Coleridge easily meets those criteria with the poems you described. And if all we had was the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, I would think it to be like Tom O’ Bedlam, like the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, one of those great, great, great poems that on its own terms, deserves to be on this list.

James: Yeah, and I guess another point in his favour is a great poet is they're all pretty unalike. I think if given Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a conversation poem and Kubla Khan and said, guess whether these are three separate poets or the same guy, you would say, oh, there's a totally different poems. They're three different people. One's a kind of creepy gothic horror ballad. Another one is a philosophical reflection. Another is the sort of Mad Opium dream. I mean, Kubla Khan is just without a doubt, one of the top handful of purposes in English language, I think.

Henry: Oh yeah, yeah. And it has that quality of the Elegy in a Country Churchyard that so many of the lines are so quotable in the sense that they could be, in the case of the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, a lot of novels did get their titles from it. I think it was James Lees Milne. Every volume of his diaries, which there are obviously quite a few, had its title from Kubla Khan. Ancient as the Hills and so on. It's one of those poems. It just provides us with so much wonderful language in the space of what a page.

James: Sort of goes all over the place. Romantic chasms, Abyssinian made with dulcimer, icy pleasure dome with caves of ice. It just such a—it's so mysterious. I mean, there's nothing else remotely like it at all in English literature that I can think of, and its kind strangeness and virtuosity. I really love that poem.

Henry: Now, should we say a word for Shelly? Because everyone knows Ozymandias, which is one of those internet poems that goes around a lot, but I don't know how well known the rest of his body of work is beyond that. I fell in love with him when I read a very short lyric called “To—”

Music, when soft voices die,Vibrates in the memory—Odours, when sweet violets sicken,Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,Are heaped for the belovèd's bed;And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,Love itself shall slumber on.

I found that to be one of those poems that was once read and immediately memorised. But he has this very, again, broad body of work. He can write about philosophical ideas, he can write about moods, he can write narrative. He wrote Julian and Maddalo, which is a dialogue poem about visiting a madman and taking sympathy with him and asking the question, who's really mad here? Very Swiftian question. He can write about the sublime in Mont Blanc. I mean, he has got huge intellectual power along with the beauty. He's what people want Tennyson to be, I guess.

James: Yeah. Or what people think Byron might be. I think Shelly is great. I don't quite get that Byron is so much more famous. Shelly has just a dramatic and, well, maybe not quite just as, but an incredibly dramatic and exciting life to go along with it,

Henry: I think some of the short lyrics from Byron have got much more purchase in day-to-day life, like She Walks in Beauty.

James: Yeah. I think you have to maybe get Shelly a little more length, don't you? I mean, even there's something like Ode to the West Wind is you have to take the whole thing to love it, perhaps.

Henry: Yes. And again, I think he's a bit like George Herbert. He's always thinking you really have to pay attention and think with him. Whereas Byron has got lots of lines you can copy out and give to a girl that you like on the bus or something.

James: Yes. No, that's true.

Henry: I don't mean that in quite as rude a way as it sounds. I do think that's a good thing. But Shelly's, I think, much more of a thinker, and I agree with you Childe Harold and so forth. It's all crashing bore. I might to try it again, but awful.

James: I don't want move past Coledridge without inflicting little Coledridge on you. Can I?

Henry: Oh, yes. No, sorry. We didn't read Coledridge, right?

James: Are just, I mean, what to read from Coledridge? I mean, I could read the whole of Kubla Khan, but that would be maybe a bit boring. I mean, again, these are pretty famous and obvious lines from Frost at Midnight, which is Coledridge sitting up late at night in his cottage with his baby in its cradle, and he sort of addressing it and thinking about it. And I just think these lines are so, well, everything we've said about Coledridge, philosophical, thoughtful, beautiful, in a sort of totally knockout, undeniable way. So it goes, he's talking to his young son, I think.

My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heartWith tender gladness, thus to look at thee,And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,And in far other scenes! For I was rearedIn the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breezeBy lakes and sandy shores, beneath the cragsOf ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,Which image in their bulk both lakes and shoresAnd mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hearThe lovely shapes and sounds intelligibleOf that eternal language, which thy GodUtters, who from eternity doth teachHimself in all, and all things in himself.

Which is just—what aren't those lines of poetry doing? And with such kind of confidence, the way you get from talking to your baby and its cradle about what kind of upbringing you hope it will have to those flashes of, I mean quite Wordsworthian beauty, and then the sort of philosophical tone at the end. It's just such a stunning, lovely poem. Yeah, I love it.

Henry: Now we both got Yeats and Hopkins. And Hopkins I think is really, really a tremendous poet, but neither of us has put Browning, which a lot of other people maybe would. Can we have a go at Browning for a minute? Can we leave him in shreds?

James: Oh God. I mean, you're going to be a better advocate of Browning than I am. I've never—

Henry: Don't advocate for him. No, no, no.

James: We we're sticking him out.

Henry: We're sticking him.

James: I wonder if I even feel qualified to do that. I mean, I read quite a bit of Browning at university, found it hard to get on with sometimes. I think I found a little affected and pretentious about him and a little kind of needlessly difficult in a sort of off-puttingly Victorian way. But then I was reading, I reviewed a couple of years ago, John Carey has an excellent introduction to English poetry. I think it's called A Little History of Poetry in which he described Browning's incredibly long poem, The Ring in the Book as one of the all time wonders of verbal art. This thing is, I think it's like 700 or 800 pages long poem in the Penguin edition, which has always given me pause for thought and made me think that I've dismissed Browning out of hand because if John Carey's telling me that, then I must be wrong.

But I think I have had very little pleasure out of Browning, and I mean by the end of the 19th century, there was a bit of a sort of Victorian cult of Browning, which I think was influential. And people liked him because he was a living celebrity who'd been anointed as a great poet, and people liked to go and worship at his feet and stuff. I do kind of wonder whether he's lasted, I don't think many people read him for pleasure, and I wonder if that maybe tells its own story. What's your case against Browning?

Henry: No, much the same. I think he's very accomplished and very, he probably, he deserves a place on the list, but I can't enjoy him and I don't really know why. But to me, he's very clever and very good, but as you say, a bit dull.

James: Yeah, I totally agree. I'm willing. It must be our failing, I'm sure. Yeah, no, I'm sure. I'm willing to believe they're all, if this podcast is listened to by scholars of Victorian poetry, they're cringing and holding their head in their hands at this—

Henry: They've turned off already. Well, if you read The Ring and the Book, you can come back on and tell us about it.

James: Oh God, yeah. I mean, in about 20 years time.

Henry: I think we both have Auden, but you said something you said, “does Auden have an edge of fraudulence?”

James: Yeah, I mean, again, I feel like I'm being really rude about a lot of poets that I really love. I don't really know why doesn't think, realising that people consider to be a little bit weak makes you appreciate their best stuff even more I guess. I mean, it's hard to make that argument without reading a bit of Auden. I wonder what bit gets it across. I haven't gotten any ready. What would you say about Auden?

Henry: I love Auden. I think he was the best poet of the 20th century maybe. I mean, I have to sort of begrudgingly accept T.S. Eliot beside, I think he can do everything from, he can do songs, light lyrics, comic verse, he can do occasional poetry, obituaries. He was a political poet. He wrote in every form, I think almost literally that might be true. Every type of stanza, different lines. He was just structurally remarkable. I suspect he'll end up a bit like Pope once the culture has turned away from that style or that sort of broad type of writing. He'll be looked at admiringly, but people won't be rushing to read him. Whereas at the moment, he's in Four Weddings and a Funeral, isn't he?

James: Yeah.

Henry: And again, one of those, it's a bit like Wordsworth and the daffodils. It's a very good poem and I'm really glad it's in the movie, but it's not a perfectly representative piece of Auden. I mean, he did adverts. He wrote a poem for an advert for the GPO. He could really do anything in poetry, it sometimes feels like.

James: Yeah, I mean, I wonder if that might be the slight edge of weakness to him is that he can turn it on so easily. So I mean, I absolutely love Auden. He's my favourite 20th century poet. But yet again, I, I'm disparaging somebody I love, which is that I think when you've read a lot of him, you begin to notice there are certain tricks and phrases and tones that he deploys perhaps a little bit too easily. There's a recurring word that I remember thinking was popping up all over the place in all of them, which is describing slightly unexpected things as public. So there's I think a reference to the ribbons around the necks to the public doves is a line somewhere, something about public statues. And what I began to feel was that this was a slightly easy way of making poetry seem a little bit more political and a little bit more, I guess, obviously public than it perhaps seemed at first sight and was way of adding this sort of slight little dusting of profundity to it.

That seemed a bit too easy. I guess the other thing that struck me was the way that he was so easily imitated by a lot of other poets during the thirties, I mean right up until the forties as well, Kingsley and Philip Larkin. A lot of their early poetry just sounds exactly like Bad Auden. And that to me is maybe a sign that Auden was proceeding by these sort of strategies and tricks that could be learned sometimes. I also think another problem with him is that some of the early poetry, and I should be backing, backing this up with evidence, becomes complicated and incomprehensible slightly without justification. And he is perhaps somebody else—and I think this might be why he was rude about Tennyson and said that Tennyson wasn't really thinking and he was just sounding beautiful—is that I think Auden could fall that way himself. And I do think that T.S .Eliot never did. Everything in T.S. Eliot really feels hewn out of total originality. T.S .Eliot never had anybody who was easily able to sound like T.S. Eliot because that's impossible. What would an invitation of T.S .Eliot even sound like, I think. But yeah, I mean I also do just completely love him and every time I read Auden, I think he's good in a way that I just didn't even think about last time I read him.

Henry: Yeah, no, I think that's right. I think at his worst he slips into this kind of rhythmic, melodic, beautiful nonsense profundity, but at his best, he really earns his place in the top 20 at his best.

James: Or would you read to justify that?

Henry: Well, I do think the Musee des Beaux Arts, which everyone knows, it's one of those examples of everyone knows it for a reason, but some of the longer poems, I don't have them in the Oxford Book. Some of the longer poems are very good as well. And the Achilles Shield, the Fall of Rome, I mean, I think there's quite a lot there.

James: I had a real moment a couple of months ago with Spain, one of the Revolutionary poems, and it's just so full of, I mean, it was a poem that he eventually disowned because he thought it was dishonest, but it's just full of these stunningly beautiful little details. So in one line, Spain is that arid square that fragment nipped off from hot Africa soldered so crudely to inventive Europe that tableland scored by rivers and I mean, it's just—Spain, the arid square fragment nipped off from Hot Africa soldered so crudely to inventive Europe is just sort of, I think is a beautiful passage of description. Although I would say that adjective inventive Europe for me is that slight Auden phoniness you sometimes get where an adjective is maybe liking to seem like it's doing a little more than it really is. I think it's kind of gesturing to a sort of knowledge or thought about Europe that Auden wants you to believe he has, but perhaps he doesn't really. And the famous last lines of Spain, which is a poem about revolution, which he eventually really disowned, but I think is so powerful and rhetorical and beautiful,

The stars are dead. The animals will not look.We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, andHistory to the defeatedMay say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.

And again, he's one of those people, he can just do that anytime. He's full of stunning rhetorical moments like that.

Henry: He called that a wicked doctrine.

James: Yes, all sort because all about blowing people up and how that's justified for political end, which I didn't, that matters. I think the argument for that per

Henry: No, I think it matters.

James: I think the argument for that poem is that it's not Auden saying this is exactly what I mean about revolution. This is Auden producing a poem that expresses very convincingly and compellingly and rhetorically a point of view. It's possible to have in the world. But I don't think a poem has to be a final political statement. And I can't even believe the Auden wrote it, meaning it to be a final political statement. I think he allowed himself to inhabit a mood in a way of what it would be like to see the world. And the poem is an expression of that rather than being a political pamphlet,

Henry: I suppose. But I don't think you'd catch Milton being quite so free and easy with difficult ideas like that. And I think that's why he recanted it.

James: Yes. And I think that's part of the weakness that we're perhaps talking about or not.

Henry: He had the same argument, the September poem. The outbreak of war, which no one ever wanted him to change the last line, “we must love one another or die.” He wanted to change it to “we must love one another and die.” And he was constantly in later life people saying, no, no, no, you shouldn't change it. It's very good. And he had to say, no, you must allow me to tell you I am the poet. And of course we can love one another. It won't stop us dying. And I think he became a little bit horrified with the idea that he'd allowed the beauty of his rhetoric to slip him into this in a way obvious nonsense.

James: Yes. And I think actually perhaps subconsciously what the older Auden was worried about the younger Auden wasn't necessarily that his politics were detestable. I think what he was perhaps getting at somewhere in himself was the idea that he was able to say very fine and grand sounding things without perhaps totally meaning them or just saying things because they sounded good, which is perhaps an occasional weakness of his poems. And I wondered if the political qualms slightly concealed the fact that somewhere within himself has understood that this was a bit of a problem with him.

Henry: I do think so. The poems we're talking about are from a book called Another Time. I think if you want to read all them, just buy that book and read it. Every page is wonderful. It’s his best collection. It's probably the best collection of the 20th century. And that is the only weakness in that poem where spending all this time talking about it, it is exceptionally good. The elegy to Sigmund Freud is exceptionally good. William Butler Yates elegy in there as well.

James: That's a stunningly good poem. The very best.

Henry: Yes. And then the second half of the book is light lyrics and comic songs, and the comedy is quite dark, but working with Benjamin Britain, it is the full range of poetic art in a way that I think would be rare to see him now. Go on.

James: No, go on. No, I was going to move on to another poet, but I feel like you're the mc.

Henry: Well, I was going to say, why don't we talk a little bit about the poets who didn't get into the list, but who we love and who maybe could jostle in on for the next, if we're having these tiers, the next tier, I want to talk about Cowper and Emily Bronte. I think we both Herrick for this.

James: Yeah.

Henry: Who else? Do you have any others that you want to add? Charlotte Mew?

James: No, I'm not a particular fan. I might make a case with somebody who I've put in my, I might use this opportunity to make the case. Someone I've put in my tier three who doesn't make on list at all, which is Thomas Hardy, who I think is one of the two or three great 20th century poets, I think sometimes isn't quite thought of in that way. I think people think he's more minor than he is, but I've, I've got a case to make for Thomas Hardy who I actually have put in my list. He's not someone who should be there, the nerd over him, but I could do Hardy. And then you can tell me about perhaps the people that you

Henry: Talk us into Hardy then.

James: Well, I think Hardy when you, because I did the same thing. I asked chat GPT, who's your list of the top 20 poets? He didn't make it. And I think that does reflect a general perception about him, which I think partly comes from the fact that he's better known as a novelist. People forget the novelist can also be a great poet. People can't get their heads around the idea that he was one of the great novelists of the 19th century, one of the great poets, the 20th century. And I think his poetry sometimes has a kind of wilful awkwardness about it that makes it look more minor than it really is. The style can be quite demonic sometimes. He's often deliberately aping the slightly awkward speech of rural England in a way that's extremely effective, but I think can lull people into thinking that that's because he's an awkward writer, which it never is.

And I just think his scope as a poet is amazing. I mean, there are so many different sides to Hardy, the poet, the most famous side of the beautiful poems he wrote about his dead wife, Emma, who he had a very stormy and happy marriage with, and then felt enormously guilty when she died. And he wrote a series of stunning poems, stunning lyrics about his regret over her. There are poems about loss of faith, which I think are kind of on that theme. He's talking about tennis and not having ideas. I think hard is someone who has ideas. And there are all kinds of fantastic long hardy perms, which you think are immensely profound about the Victorian crisis of faith. Things like God's Funeral. There's a wonderful Hardy poem, which I think is totally underrated, called God Forgotten, which is this sort of fantasy and Hardy sometimes of the earth sending a messenger to God to say, why is everything so terrible down here on Earth?

And God sort of apologises in this kind of benign way and says, I've completely forgotten I ever created, you see, I'm amazed it's still going. It seems so terrible. When I created it, it seemed like such a botch job. I just left it to itself and I thought it would burst into flames or something. I can't believe you're still going down there, but I'm really sorry to hear that everything's going wrong. And it's funny, and I think it's an amazingly profound poem about faith in Victorian England. And those are just two sides of Hardy. Can I read one Hardy? This is one of my, I think this is a pretty easy, Hardy poem to love. And this is one of his poems about his dead wife, Emma, and it's called Beeny Cliff. And the fact that it is called Beeny Cliff is one of those slightly sort of unfortunate, awkward Hardyisms that I think can sometimes make him seem awkward or absurd in a way that that he shouldn't.

But this again, is another of my all time favourite poems. I think it's so easy to love and it's so beautiful and sad, and it’s a memory of his wife and him walking by the sea.

O the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea, And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free The woman whom I loved so, and who loyally loved me.

The pale mews plained below us, and the waves seemed far away seagulls called In a nether sky, engrossed in saying their ceaseless babbling say, engrossed - absorbedAs we laughed light-heartedly aloft on that clear-sunned March day. aloft – high above

A little cloud then cloaked us, and there flew an irised rain, irised - rainbow-colouredAnd the Atlantic dyed its levels with a dull misfeatured stain, levels – surface; misshaped And then the sun burst out again, and purples prinked the main. adorned the sea

Still in all its chasmal beauty bulks old Beeny to the sky, rises in its huge mass And shall she and I not go there once again now March is nigh, And the sweet things said in that March say anew there by and by?

What if still in chasmal beauty looms that wild weird western shore, looms - appearsThe woman now is – elsewhere - whom the ambling pony bore, ambling – at a slow pace And nor knows nor cares for Beeny, and will laugh there nevermore.

One of my favourite poems. I love it.

Henry: That's fantastic.

James: It's so good. There's a good recording of Dylan Thomas somewhere reads a lot of poems. There's an album you can get on Spotify where he reads some of his poems and some of the people's poems, including some Thomas Hardy poems. And Dylan Thomas says, I've got a great big collection of Thomas Hardy's poems, the Complete Hardy. And he says, you can open it on any page, any page you like, and there's something good in it. Thomas Hardy is also the who most reliably moves me to tears. I almost feel like I open him anywhere and all that sort of nostalgia and regret, which his great themes I will instantly find moving somewhere.

Henry: Okay, so we've got Thomas Hardy in our top 20, I think.

James: Yeah, you've got a couple of people who you think are out cases.

Henry: I don't know that I can argue them into the list the way we have with Hardy. But the three that I feel most strongly about are William Cowper, Emily Bronte, and Herrick. And I will start with Emily Bronte because again, the novel gets a lot more of the attention, but she is really, really, really a great poet and she has quite a few in the Oxford Book. She gets quite a few in there. It's all of the mood that you would expect. She's not a surprisingly cheerful poet or anything, but I think hugely accomplished. And I'm going to read, I'm going to read one or two short lyrics.

I know not how it falls on me,This summer evening, hushed and lone;Yet the faint wind comes soothinglyWith something of an olden tone.

Forgive me if I've shunned so longYour gentle greeting, earth and air!But sorrow withers e'en the strong,And who can fight against despair?

And then this one I think is maybe more famous.

The night is darkening round me,The wild winds coldly blow;But a tyrant spell has bound me,And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bendingTheir bare boughs weighed with snow;The storm is fast descending,And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,Wastes beyond wastes below;But nothing drear can move me;I will not, cannot go.

So much compression so much. Yeah,

James: That's wonderful.

Henry: And again, there's a lot more of it and it's all really, really good. And then Cowper is a sort of pre romantic. He's a late 18th century poet. He wrote hymns, he wrote with Newton who wrote Amazing Grace, the great abolitionist. Cowper was a great abolitionist.

James: Jane Austen's favourite poet,

Henry: Jane Austen's favourite poet, very good. And in those days almost everyone's favourite poet. He was read by everyone up until the early 20th century, his epic, it was a sort of domestic epic about a drawing room shorter than most epics. And it has a wonderful section about a winter walk in it. Up until the time of say E.M. Forster, I think Forster said, everyone used to read Cowper and I don’t know what happened, but now they've all stopped. So he sort of disappeared around that time maybe because I think he was just pre the Romantics and he wasn't as modern. But this, I love this poem.

The Poplars are fell’d, farewell to the shade And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade, The winds play no longer and sing in the leaves, Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives.

Twelve years have elapsed since I last took a view Of my favourite field and the bank where they grew, And now in the grass behold they are laid, And the tree is my seat that once lent me a shade.

The black-bird has fled to another retreat Where the hazels afford him a screen from the heat, And the scene where his melody charm’d me before, Resounds with his sweet-flowing ditty no more.

My fugitive years are all hasting away, And I must e’er long lie as lowly as they, With a turf on my breast and a stone at my head E’er another such grove shall arise in its stead.

’Tis a sight to engage me if any thing can To muse on the perishing pleasures of Man; Though his life be a dream, his enjoyments, I see, Have a Being less durable even than he.

So you can see that he's somewhere between Pope and Wordsworth, which is maybe an unfortunate position if you want to be a great poet. Remembered for all time. But it produced some really good stuff.

James: Yeah, Thomas Grey, I guess in a similar place,

Henry: Thomas Grey. Exactly. A similar place, no sort of similar time I suppose. At least with Grey it used to be the case that every school child knew eulogy written in a country churchyard

There’s this wonderful bit in Alan Lascelles diaries who was private secretary to King George V. And he's complaining that George the V has got absolutely no education at all. And I think he says this about George, he worked for George VI in the War. I think he says just the same as his father doesn't know a damn thing. And he says to the extent that they've never even heard of the eulogy in a country church yard, what were they doing in the school room? Because to Alan Lascelles it was like, everyone just read that at school and memorised it and knew it and it's another marvellous piece. So those are my two main ones. And Herrick, I think you are a Herrick fan.

James: Yeah, no, I totally am. Herrick again was from the very first poets I loved. I remember my gold DofE expedition at school, the Duke of Edinburgh thing. We went on to go into the countryside. I took a small cloth band volume of Herrick that I'd pretentiously discovered in a secondhand bookshop with me in my pocket so I could repose various countryside points and read it. I mean it's pretty obvious why he's not in the top 20 because the poems are lovely. He's not a particularly profound poet, but he's sort of like a kind of happier, more frivolous Thomas Hardy. I think a lot of the beauty of the poms derives from the idea that everything's passing and everybody will eventually die. I mean, the famous one is “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may/ Old time is still a flying”, that sort of furtive, fugitive pleasure stuff. He's just so lovely. I mean I have a real weakness for loveliness and poetry and he's lovely everywhere. I don’t know, did you have a particular one to read?

Henry: Well, I think the one you quoted “To the Virgins to Make Much of Time” That's a good one. It's worth remembering that he's sort of early 17th century, so there's a lot of wit but also a lot of disguised sex and gather ye rosebuds, It is I think innocent and frivolous, but it also, as the title suggests, means time's running out and rather than sitting around being gloomy like a Thomas Hardy character, we should make sure we use that virginity before we don't have the chance. And I think a lot of the pleasure of Herrick comes from that sort of the slightly submerged meaning and the wittiness that he brings on it. There's one, a very famous one called Upon Julia's Clothes

Whenas in silks my Julia goes, Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows The liquefaction of her clothes!

Next, when I cast mine eyes and see That brave vibration each way free, —O how that glittering taketh me!

It’s a bit like John Donne of his other contemporaries able to sort of fully participate in the physicality of a brief moment and spin something intense out of it.

James: I used to think that the fact that the word liquefaction takes up about what a quarter or a third of that poem I just see. So that was the cleverest thing I'd ever read. I mean I don't quite believe that now, but it is wonderful. The longer poem, Corinna’s Gone a Maying, which is him encouraging a girl called Corina to get out of bed and go and enjoy the May sunshine is lovely. Can I give you the final stanza?

Henry: Yes, please.

James: I was rediscovering, this used to my big thing, my university thesis, which was a slightly doomed enterprise was going to argue, and in fact, did unsuccessfully argue that various poets of the 17th century had been underrated, I think and unfairly judged minor. I think I was basically wrong and I was arguing for much more obscure people like Francis Kinon. But Herrick, I really do, I really do think is good. This is the sort of slight melancholy not in him. This is the last time to the poem,

Come, let us go, while we are in our prime, And take the harmless folly of the time! We shall grow old apace, and die Before we know our liberty. Our life is short, and our days run As fast away as does the sun. And, as a vapour or a drop of rain, Once lost, can ne'er be found again, So when or you or I are made A fable, song, or fleeting shade, All love, all liking, all delight Lies drown'd with us in endless night. Then, while time serves, and we are but decaying, Come, my Corinna, come, let's go a-Maying.

Which I just find lovely. I mean it's maybe a little conventional. It is not the newest idea ever expressed in English poetry, but I do think it's totally lovely.

Henry: It's not the newest idea, but Johnson was a fan of Herrick for good reason, which is that he has the essence of invention, right? He's saying all these things in new ways. I think he's delightful. There's one called to Daffodils. I love it.

James: Yeah.

Henry: Robert Frost was a really big fan of this poem and advised people to read it carefully and study it and so forth. I'll read that because it's not in the Oxford Book, but actually it ought to be. It's one of those rare moments where you think you're going to disagree with Christopher Ricks.

Fair Daffodils, we weep to seeYou haste away so soon;As yet the early-rising sunHas not attain'd his noon.Stay, stay,Until the hasting dayHas runBut to the even-song;And, having pray'd together, weWill go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,We have as short a spring;As quick a growth to meet decay,As you, or anything.We dieAs your hours do, and dryAway,Like to the summer's rain;Or as the pearls of morning's dew,Ne'er to be found again.

Absolutely. I mean devastating, but really marvellous.

James: Yeah. I really, really love Herrick. You are almost admit, I mean, he shouldn't be in the top 20, but if I was doing my favourite poets, he would be.

Henry: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And what I sometimes have done on book clubs on my Substack, we've talked about Herrick and people have said, I'm so glad I've discovered Robert Herrick. What an amazing, people just love discovering this.

James: And he's one of those people. There's a lot more where that came from

Henry: And it's all very good. Right? He's consistently good. He obviously had a very strong talent.

James: Yeah, no, I totally agree.

Henry: I was very lucky. I once went to the Samuel Johnson house in Gough Square and because they knew that I was a mild Johnson obsessive and was officially doing some research for my book, they let me hold some of Johnson's own books and one of them was his copy of Herrick, which was a very exciting moment. He was a big Herrick admirer and it had a ring stain from where Johnson had left a tankard or a cup or something, which I thought was a lovely thing, partly because Johnson was such a mess and it was a lovely little sign of that, but partly because he obviously loved that book and lived with it in a very ordinary way. He wasn't fussy about it. He just had to have his herrick around, which I can fully understand. There are some other names. Christina Rosetti, Robert Graves, Louis McNee. Is there anyone you want to make a final call for?

James: No, I don't think so. I mean, I had Blake in my list, but I don't think, unless you want me to, I don't feel like I have to make a particular case for Blake. I can read you a poem if you want, but

Henry: Yeah, read and Blake. I'm not a Blake lover, so

James: I wasn't until recently and I started reading Poems of Innocence and Poems of Experience again and they really did it for me. Hang on, you're going to have to, I'm going have one second. As I find the poem,

Henry: I'll read out a Louis MacNeice poem while you do that. It's called Charon. MacNeice is a very, very good poet. I don't think I can argue him into the top 20, but I would like him to be known. Some people know the poem, Snow or the Autumn Journal. This is called Charon, who is obviously the man who rose the boat in the underworld. So having heard Herrick and his daffodils, this is a suitable closing poem for me before you give us something from Blake,

The conductor’s hands were black with money:Hold on to your ticket, he said, the inspector’sMind is black with suspicion, and hold on toThat dissolving map. We moved through London,We could see the pigeons through the glass but failedTo hear their rumours of wars, we could seeThe lost dog barking but never knewThat his bark was as shrill as a cock crowing,We just jogged on, at each requestStop there was a crowd of aggressively vacantFaces, we just jogged on, eternityGave itself airs in revolving lightsAnd then we came to the Thames and allThe bridges were down, the further shoreWas lost in fog, so we asked the conductorWhat we should do. He said: Take the ferryFaute de mieux. We flicked the flashlightAnd there was the ferryman just as VirgilAnd Dante had seen him. He looked at us coldlyAnd his eyes were dead and his hands on the oarWere black with obols and varicose veinsMarbled his calves and he said to us coldly:If you want to die you will have to pay for it.

I think it's great.

James: Yeah, that is fantastic. I love that. I was unfamiliar with it too.

Henry: Yes. Yeah, under appreciated. Right. So you're going to give us some Blake to close?

James: Yeah. I mean this is again, a famous poem by Blake. Some of Blake is I think, hard to appreciate because of, it’s sort of, I think what strikes people as a kind of faux on affected naivety that's hard to get round or the later stuff in the professed books is just completely mad and incomprehensible. You have to know all these mad characters like Zen are and what they mean and what Blake thought about 18th century politics. But this, while it doubtless has meanings that I maybe don't grasp. I think it's just a great poem. It's called Hear the Voice of the Bard. I think it's the first poem in Songs of Experience.

Hear the voice of the Bard!Who Present, Past, & Future seesWhose ears have heard,The Holy Word,That walk'd among the ancient trees.

Calling the lapsed SoulAnd weeping in the evening dew:That might controll,The starry pole;And fallen fallen light renew!

O Earth O Earth return!Arise from out the dewy grass;Night is worn,And the mornRises from the slumberous mass.

Turn away no more:Why wilt thou turn awayThe starry floorThe watry shoreIs giv'n thee till the break of day.

Henry: Well, that's wonderful.

James: Is great. I can't say that. I can explain it to you line by line and whatever, but I do love it.

Henry: Yeah. Very.

James: Yeah.

Henry: Okay, wonderful. James, this has been a delight. Thank you so much. Yeah,

James: I far too much fun. Thank you. Thank you very much for having me.

Henry: We'll do it again sometime.

James: Yeah, I'd love to.

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The twenty best English poets

The Common Reader