The Nation's Favourite Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Foreword by Griff Rhys Jones

  BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH What If

  RUDYARD KIPLING If—

  ‘His look was a lion’s,

  Full of rage, defiance’

  DYLAN THOMAS Do not go gentle into that good night

  JENNY JOSEPH Warning

  EDMUND BLUNDEN The Midnight Skaters

  SYLVIA PLATH Lady Lazarus

  W.B. YEATS An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

  MAYA ANGELOU Phenomenal Woman

  WILFRED OWEN Dulce et Decorum Est

  SYLVIA PLATH Daddy

  JOHN HEGLEY Autumn Verses

  HAL SUMMERS My Old Cat

  MAYA ANGELOU Still I Rise

  ‘What will survive of us is love’

  PHILIP LARKIN An Arundel Tomb

  E.E. CUMMINGS Somewhere I Have Never Travelled

  SIR JOHN BETJEMAN A Subaltern’s Love-song

  W.H. AUDEN Carry Her Over the Water

  JON STALLWORTHY The Almond Tree

  LOUIS MACNEICE Meeting Point

  ADRIAN HENRI Without You

  ANON Footprints

  DYLAN THOMAS from Under Milk Wood

  STEVIE SMITH The Singing Cat

  EDWIN MORGAN Strawberries

  ROGER McGOUGH Vinegar

  SIR JOHN BETJEMAN Myfanwy

  W.B. YEATS He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

  ‘… we have no hope of better

  Happiness than this, …’

  HUGO WILLIAMS Tides

  WENDY COPE Loss

  ROGER McGOUGH Comeclose and Sleepnow

  BRIAN PATTEN Portrait of a Young Girl Raped at a Suburban Party

  DOUGLAS DUNN Modern Love

  ALICE WALKER Did this Happen to Your Mother? Did Your Sister Throw Up a Lot?

  PHILIP LARKIN Deceptions

  BRIAN PATTEN A Blade of Grass

  WENDY COPE A Christmas Poem

  ‘In labour-saving homes, with care

  Their wives frizz out peroxide hair’

  CRAIG RAINE A Martian Sends a Postcard Home

  PHILIP LARKIN Toads

  W.H. AUDEN Night Mail

  PHILIP LARKIN Going, Going

  ROBERT GRAVES Welsh Incident

  PHILIP LARKIN The Whitsun Weddings

  SIR JOHN BETJEMAN Slough

  ‘For human beings only do

  What their religion tells them to’

  SIR JOHN BETJEMAN In Westminster Abbey

  SEAMUS HEANEY Follower

  CHARLES CAUSLEY Timothy Winters

  PHILIP LARKIN This Be the Verse

  A.E. HOUSMAN In Valleys Green and Still

  GEORGE MACBETH The Miner’s Helmet

  CHARLES CAUSLEY Ballad of the Bread Man

  SIR JOHN BETJEMAN Diary of a Church Mouse

  ‘Between the streams and the red clouds, hearing curlews’

  LAURIE LEE April Rise

  VERNON WATKINS Peace in the Welsh Hills

  D.H. LAWRENCE Bavarian Gentians

  R.S. THOMAS A Peasant

  TED HUGHES Wind

  ROBERT FROST Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

  TED HUGHES The Horses

  LAURENCE BINYON The Burning of the Leaves

  ‘I believe life ends with death, and that is all’

  ROGER McGOUGH Let Me Die a Youngman’s Death

  JOHN McCRAE In Flanders Fields

  CHARLES CAUSLEY I saw a Jolly Hunter

  SIR JOHN BETJEMAN Death in Leamington

  SEAMUS HEANEY Mid-Term Break

  SIEGFRIED SASSOON The Death-Bed

  STEVIE SMITH Not Waving but Drowning

  TED HUGHES View of a Pig

  PHILIP LARKIN Ambulances

  TONY HARRISON Long Distance II

  JON SILKIN Death of a Son

  SIEGFRIED SASSOON Base Details

  WILFRED OWEN The Send-off

  W.H. AUDEN Stop all the clocks (IX from Twelve Songs)

  ‘For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen’

  R.S. THOMAS The Bright Field

  SHEENAGH PUGH Sometimes

  SIR JOHN BETJEMAN Christmas

  PHILIP LARKIN Church Going

  CAROL ANN DUFFY Prayer

  W.B. YEATS Sailing to Byzantium

  TED HUGHES The Thought-Fox

  BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH Dis Poetry

  SEAMUS HEANEY Digging

  T.S. ELIOT Little Gidding (I)

  G.K. CHESTERTON The Rolling English Road

  LAURIE LEE Christmas Landscape

  STEPHEN SPENDER I think continually of those who were truly great

  ‘Time held me green and dying’

  DYLAN THOMAS Fern Hill

  SEAMUS HEANEY Blackberry-Picking

  THOMAS HARDY ‘If It’s Ever Spring Again’

  DYLAN THOMAS The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

  GAVIN EWART A 14-Year-Old Convalescent Cat in the Winter

  DYLAN THOMAS Poem in October

  A.E. HOUSMAN Into My Heart An Air That Kills

  ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

  Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world’

  EDWIN MUIR The Horses

  ROGER McGOUGH At Lunchtime

  WALTER DE LA MARE The Listeners

  ADRIAN MITCHELL Fifteen Million Plastic Bags

  T.S. ELIOT The Waste Land (II. A Game of Chess)

  W.B. YEATS The Second Coming

  Index of Poets’ Names

  Index of First Lines

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  FOREWORD BY GRIFF RHYS JONES

  HERE IS ANOTHER selection of first-rate poetry: comic, moving, pertinent, witty, sharp, short and longish. Gathered together in this book is a comprehensive selection of the finest verse of the last hundred years. A host of different voices, which I hope will surprise and entertain in their variety and scope. Modern poetry is not the difficult and inaccessible stuff that popular imagination would have it. These poems really mean something to a lot of people.

  Well, there we are. I can write with such breezy confidence because this selection is actually new and surprising to me as well, though not everybody seems to understand this. After the success of The Nation’s Favourite Poems, for instance, a doctor from Persia sent me a poem of his own. There was a note with it: ‘I hope you will agree with the many who have told me that this is the best poem ever written in the sonnet form and include it in your next anthology.’

  Alas for the doctor, the retired coal miner, the former redcoat, and the many other aspiring poets who send me their work, the judgement as to whether they have written the best, or possibly the worst, poetry in the English language does not rest with me. The poems included in this volume, as in the other books in this series, were all voted for by ‘the nation’ in a television poll. While a significant proportion of the nation may have overlooked their duty in this respect, the number of people who do bother to vote is actually quite large. Large enough to pre-empt block claques and family conspiracies anyway.

  The hundred or so poems promoted here are largely familiar works from acknowledged writers. Even the exciting sounding ‘The Nightmare’ by W.H. Auden turned out on closer enquiry to be the rather more familiar poem, ‘Night Mail’. We have also had to re-include some favourites from that classic of the genre, The Nation’s Favourite Poems (which was open to contenders from the entire span of human creativity).

  Nonetheless, bizarrely, the nation’s favourite poem of all time, Kipling’s ‘If—’, is not the nation’s favourite modern poem of the last hundred years. Perhaps some of the nation is unaware that it was written in 1912. (This may be the same section of the na
tion who voted for Wordsworth’s ‘The Daffodils’ and Christina Rossetti’s ‘Remember’.) But then, everybody knows that ‘modern poetry’ is different from ‘poetry’. It does not rhyme or scan and tends to deal with difficult subjects, except, er, here.

  Philip Larkin identified the quality of a good poem as being the capturing of a specific emotional moment. Certainly choosing your absolute single favourite poem of the last hundred years is a demanding choice and it comes as no surprise that this selection tends towards the lyrical. Here are poems which people have stored away for later use, which encapsulate feeling rather than analysis. It is not that the experiments of modern poetry have been entirely ignored: there were votes for T.S. Eliot (in reflective mood) for example. But most of the great movements and significant advances seem to have failed to lodge in the heart. No Imagists, no Concrete, no Ezra Pound, no Thom Gunn. Favourite poems seem more likely to be emotional rather than intellectual. Those sometimes-despised sentimental Georgian poets will not lie down.

  If, in some circles, the twentieth century is notable mainly for breaking ground and moulds and daring innovation, the nation itself seems wholly unconvinced. Most of the poetry here would be recognisable to Palgrave. There were times, as the votes were counted, when this book threatened to be the Collected Works of Sir John Betjeman. He along with Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes, Dylan Thomas and Seamus Heaney jostle for top position as favourite modern poet.

  W.H. Auden is well represented too, but in his less ‘coded’ work. (His film work, in fact. ‘Night Mail’ was the commentary for a documentary, and ‘Stop all the clocks’ became famous, of course, thanks to Four Weddings and a Funeral.) Our electorate seems to like a simple approach to a complex matter. I was once on a literary committee where several members vigorously attacked the distinguished Welsh poet R.S. Thomas for his ‘clichés’, by which they meant, possibly, the familiarity of his subjects and images: fields, farming, the burdens of life and so forth. But perhaps the poetry that people love and revere, ancient or modern, has always addressed itself to those familiar subjects rather better than any other literary form, and will always continue to do so.

  Setting aside the appreciation of nature, there is an awful lot of loss here. Deaths of fathers figure strongly, and deaths of children and spouses too. And, of course, the contemplation of his or her own death is never far from the true poet’s mind. Birth is also celebrated; though with a certain poetic foreboding, and usually with allusions to the infant’s ultimate death.

  For relief from births and deaths, you can turn to poems by Robert Graves, or Dylan Thomas. There are so many modern funny poets that it seems a pity there are not more here. Perhaps wry and detached irony does not a favourite make. Except in the case of the winning poem, of course. It was a shock to many, including, so I was told, the author, Jenny Joseph, that ‘Warning’ romped home ahead of the field. The producer had to go and look it up. (So did I, but it was the producer’s job.) Some have said that the choice had something to do with the fact that the poem has been prominently featured on a best-selling tea towel. I find books easier to take on a train, but I have read The Oxford Book of Modern English Verse and ‘Warning is certainly there, chosen by Larkin himself.

  So here is a first-rate selection of some of the greatest poetry of the last hundred years. And I say that, secure in the knowledge that I did not choose these poems, the nation did. (Aspiring poets, of whatever standard, please, please read that last bit again, very carefully. Thank you.)

  But having said all that, I am going to break these rules and insert a special poem that nobody voted for. The BBC commissioned a modern version of the poem ‘If— ’ to be read on television when the results of the poll were announced. It is called ‘What If’ and was written by Benjamin Zephaniah. Here it is, together with the original Rudyard Kipling poem that inspired its creation.

  BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH 1958–

  * * *

  WHAT IF

  If you can keep your money when governments about you

  Are losing theirs and blaming it on you.

  If you can trust your neighbour when they trust not you

  And they be very nosy too;

  If you can await the warm delights of summer

  Then summer comes and goes with sun not seen,

  And pay so much for drinking water

  Knowing that the water is unclean.

  If you seek peace in times of war creation,

  And you can see that oil merchants are to blame,

  If you can meet a pimp or politician,

  And treat those two impostors just the same;

  If you cannot bear dis-united nations

  And you think this new world order is a trick,

  If you’ve ever tried to build good race relations,

  And watch bad policing mess your work up quick.

  If you can make one heap of all your savings

  And risk buying a small house and a plot,

  Then sit back and watch the economy inflating

  Then have to deal with the negative equity you’ve got.

  If you can force your mind and body to continue

  When all the social services have gone,

  If you struggle on when there is nothing in you,

  Except the knowledge that justice cannot be wrong.

  If you can speak the truth to common people

  Or walk with Kings and Queens and live no lie,

  If you can see how power can be evil

  And know that every censor is a spy;

  If you can fill an unforgiving lifetime

  With years of working hard to make ends meet,

  You may not be wealthy but I am sure you will find

  That you can hold your head high as you walk the streets.

  RUDYARD KIPLING 1865–1936

  * * *

  IF—

  If you can keep your head when all about you

  Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

  If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

  But make allowance for their doubting too;

  If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

  Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

  Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

  And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

  If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;

  If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;

  If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

  And treat those two impostors just the same;

  If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

  Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

  Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

  And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

  If you can make one heap of all your winnings

  And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

  And lose, and start again at your beginnings

  And never breathe a word about your loss;

  If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

  To serve your turn long after they are gone,

  And so hold on when there is nothing in you

  Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

  If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

  Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch

  If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

  If all men count with you, but none too much;

  If you can fill the unforgiving minute

  With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

  Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

  And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

  ‘His look was a lion’s,

  Full of rage, defiance’

  from ‘My Old Cat’

  DYLAN THOMAS 1914–53

  * * *

  DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

  Do not go gentle into that good night,r />
  Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

  Because their words had forked no lightning they

  Do not go gentle into that good night.

  Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

  Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

  And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

  Do not go gentle into that good night.

  Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

  Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  And you, my father, there on the sad height,

  Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

  Do not go gentle into that good night.

  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  JENNY JOSEPH 1932–

  * * *

  WARNING

  When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

  With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.

  And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

  And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.

  I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired

  And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

  And run my stick along the public railings

  And make up for the sobriety of my youth.

  I shall go out in my slippers in the rain

  And pick the flowers in other people’s gardens

  And learn to spit.

  You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat

  And eat three pounds of sausages at a go

  Or only bread and pickle for a week

  And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

  But now we must have clothes that keep us dry

  And pay our rent and not swear in the street

  And set a good example for the children.

  We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

  But maybe I ought to practise a little now?

  So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised