Fortunatus' Song

Among the ruins of Victorian poetry, few pieces command more affectionate derision than "Fortunatus' Song." Drawn from Alfred Austin's sprawling pastoral epic Fortunatus the Pessimist, this stanza has outlived its creator's ambitions entirely through failure. Austin, who somehow succeeded Tennyson as Poet Laureate, produced verse so earnest and so clumsily constructed that modern readers cannot read it without laughing. The final couplet has become legendary - the kind of poem English teachers produce when they want to demonstrate that even elevated sentiment can collapse into absurdity. It is catastrophically bad verse, and that is precisely why it endures. For readers who delight in the poetry of failure, who cherish the accidentally hilarious, who understand that some monuments last not because they soar but because they tumble magnificently, this is a small masterpiece of unintended comedy.