Just as Edward Bulwer-Lytton is associated with bombastic writing, what is the similarly famous poem of William McGonagall?
"William McGonagall William Topaz McGonagall (March 1825 – 29 September 1902) was a Scottish weaver, poet and actor. He won notoriety as an extremely bad poet who exhibited no recognition of, or concern for, his peers' opinions of his work. He wrote about 200 poems, including ""The Tay Bridge Disaster"" and ""The Famous Tay Whale"", which are widely regarded as some of the worst in English literature. Groups throughout Scotland engaged him to make recitations from his work, and contemporary descriptions of these performances indicate that many listeners were appreciating McGonagall's skill as a comic music hall character. Collections of"
"by far the most famous ever written by McGonagall, and is still widely quoted. It begins: And it ends: William McGonagall wrote two other poems about the Tay bridges. The first one, written before the disaster about the first bridge, begins as follows: The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay: And it ends: After the original bridge collapsed, a new one was built, providing the opportunity for another poem, which begins: An Address to the New Tay Bridge The Tay Bridge Disaster ""The Tay Bridge Disaster"" is a poem written in 1880 by the Scottish poet William McGonagall, who has"
"of the first Scots to write in standard English. His major work was ""Diophantus and Charidora"". ""Inconstancy Upbraided"" is perhaps the best of his short poems. He is credited with a little poem, ""Old Long Syne"", which probably suggested Robert Burns's famous ""Auld Lang Syne"". He is also the author of a ballad called ""Bothwell"" about the battle fought by James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell with the border reiver, John Elliot of Park, also known as Little Jock Elliot or Little Jock of the Park. The ballad recounts how Bothwell, in attempting to arrest Little Jock Elliot, suffers life-threatening"
"verse by William McGonagall. About two years after completion, the bridge collapsed under the weight of a full train of passengers during a fierce storm. All on board the train were lost and some bodies were never recovered. McGonagall's ""The Tay Bridge Disaster"" recounts the tragedy in verse. perhaps one of his best known poems. The public inquiry of the Tay Bridge disaster in 1880 found that the bridge had been ""badly designed, badly built and badly maintained"" and Sir Thomas Bouch was blamed for the catastrophe. He had under-designed the structure and used brittle cast iron for critical components,"
"have been advanced in the last 40 years, leading to 'forensic engineering' reinterpretations of what actually happened. The disaster inspired several songs and poems, most famously William McGonagall's ""The Tay Bridge Disaster"", widely considered to be of such a low quality as to be comical. The German poet Theodor Fontane, shocked by the news, wrote his poem """". It was published only ten days after the tragedy happened. C. Horne's ballad ""In Memory of the Tay Bridge Disaster"" was published as a broadside in May 1880. It describes the moment of the disaster as: ""Hatter's Castle"", the 1931 novel of"
"over. The entire train fell into the firth, with the loss of 75 passengers and train crew. The event was commemorated in a poem, The Tay Bridge Disaster (1880), written by William McGonagall, a notoriously unskilled Scottish poet. The critical response to his article was enhanced as he had previously written two poems celebrating the strength and certain immortality of the Tay Bridge. A second much more well received poem was published in the same year by the German writer Theodor Fontane. A. J. Cronin's first novel, ""Hatter's Castle"" (1931), includes a scene involving the Tay Bridge Disaster, and the"
"Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton, who served as Governor-General of India and British Ambassador to France, and wrote poetry under the pseudonym Owen Meredith. Bulwer-Lytton's literary works were highly popular; his novels earned him a fortune. He coined the phrases ""the great unwashed"", ""pursuit of the almighty dollar"", ""the pen is mightier than the sword"", and ""dweller on the threshold"". Then came a sharp decline in his reputation, so that he is known today for little more than the opening line ""It was a dark and stormy night"", the first seven words of his novel ""Paul Clifford"" (1830). The sardonic"
"sometimes with a light touch. Some comparison to William McGonagall is worth making. Unlike McGonagall, Moore commanded a fairly wide variety of meters and forms, albeit like Emily Dickinson the majority of her verse is in the ballad meter. Like McGonagall, she held a maidenly bluestocking's allegiance to the Temperance movement, and frequently indited odes to the joys of sobriety. Most importantly, like McGonagall, she was drawn to themes of accident, disaster, and sudden death; as has been said of A. E. Housman's ""A Shropshire Lad"", in her pages you can count the dead and wounded. Edgar Wilson Nye called"
"drama, the protagonist of which was often a poet. It was characterized by a number of features including lengthy introspective soliloquies by the protagonist, which led to the charge that the poetry was egotistical. Spasmodic poets The spasmodic poets was a group of British poets of the Victorian era. The term was coined by William Edmonstoune Aytoun with some derogatory as well as humorous intention. The epithet itself is attributed, by Thomas Carlyle, to Lord Byron. Spasmodic poets include George Gilfillan, the friend and inspiration of William McGonagall. Gilfillan worked for thirty years on his long poem ""Night"", but he"
"and dramatic visuals. These text-based conceptual pieces categorised as recycled sunlight pieces, billboard pieces, fire poems, woodcut panels, and watercolors. Montgomery's cryptic and emotionally resonant poetry comments on contemporary life and affirms his personal and philosophical beliefs, which he describes as ""melancholic post-Situationist"", a 20th-century antiauthoritarian Marxist movement. Montgomery's famous black and white poems pasted on London billboards has, occasionally, provoked run-ins with the police. He was once put into the back of a police van after he pasted his poem for William Blake on a billboard in Bethnal Green. Montgomery recalled; ""But I got into a conversation about literature"
"over it. It began: And finished: More than a year before the disaster, McGonagall had written a poem in praise of the Tay Bridge: ""The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay"", in which he specifically expressed a desire Once the new replacement bridge had been built, he composed an ode to the new construction: ""An Address to the New Tay Bridge"" ""Strong enough all windy storms to defy"". McGonagall's home city of Dundee maintains several reminders of his life: He is buried in an unmarked grave in Greyfriars Kirkyard, Edinburgh. From c.1950 to 1995 a memorial bench stood on the"
"poet (in newspapers). His poems spoke of courage, loss, the glory of war and tales of gallantry. He led the Irish troops (the most recent immigrants to the U.S.) and was so admired by his troops that six weeks before his death they presented him with a medal to show their affection. His most famous poem, ""Antony and Cleopatra"", was beloved by both North and South in antebellum America and regularly memorized by school children in the U.S. through the 1940s. General William Haines Lytle died leading a charge at Chickamauga in the Civil War. Lytle Hill, in Chickamauga and"
"was a friend and contemporary of Charles Dickens and was one of the pioneers of the historical novel, exemplified by his most popular work, ""The Last Days of Pompeii"". He is best remembered today for the opening line to the novel ""Paul Clifford"", which begins ""It was a dark and stormy night..."" and is considered by some to be the worst opening sentence in the English language. However, Bulwer-Lytton is also responsible for well-known sayings such as ""The pen is mightier than the sword"" from his play ""Richelieu"". Despite being a very popular author for 19th-century readers, few people today"
"""a majority would call ""Falstaff"" his greatest work"" most people would ""say they like the ""Enigma"" best."" Even during Elgar's lifetime, the musical scholar Percy Scholes wrote of ""Falstaff"" that it was a ""great work"" but ""so far as public appreciation goes, a comparative failure."" Sir Donald Tovey viewed ""Falstaff"" as ""one of the immeasurably great things in music"" with power ""identical with Shakespeare's,"" and the 1955 reference work ""The Record Guide"" described ""Falstaff"" as ""the only tone poem of its day that suffers nothing by comparison with the best of Richard Strauss's works in the genre"". Bernard Shaw wrote"
"his verse remain popular, with several volumes available today. McGonagall has been lampooned as the worst poet in British history. The chief criticisms are that he is deaf to poetic metaphor and unable to scan correctly. His only apparent understanding of poetry was his belief that it needed to rhyme. McGonagall's fame stems from the humorous effects these shortcomings are considered to generate in his work. Scholars argue that his inappropriate rhythms, weak vocabulary, and ill-advised imagery combine to make his work amongst the most unintentionally amusing dramatic poetry in the English language. His work is in a long tradition"
"in England. Chief among the circle was arguably the soldier, courtier and makar Alexander Montgomerie. He had achieved celebrity after victory over Patrick Hume in ""The Flyting Betwixt Montgomerie and Polwart"" (c.1583). His many works include public poems such as ""The Navigatioun"", a long allegory called ""The Cherry and the Slae"", some devotional poems, and a large number of personal court lyrics sometimes modelled on poets such as Ronsard. Sonnets on various themes include an autobiographical sequence that deftly charts frustration with ""the law's delay"". Even when Montgomerie came to be politically excluded from the court sometime in the mid"
"both as owing something of a debt to Robert Browning, and as being ""metrically and intrinsically ballads"". He shared the popular verdict that ""McAndrew's Hymn"" is the more memorable, but did not find it easy to say why. He found both poems equally successful. The greater memorability may be because there is ""greater poetry in the subject matter. It is McAndrew who creates the poetry of Steam [...]"". On the other hand, Lord Birkenhead, writing in 1947, considered ""The ""Mary Gloster"""" to be the more successful of the two. More recently, Peter Keating (1994) and David Gilmour (2003) also have"
"and self-determination, and the urgent issues and political turbulence of his day. Writing in English, Latin, and Italian, he achieved international renown within his lifetime, and his celebrated ""Areopagitica"" (1644), written in condemnation of pre-publication censorship, is among history's most influential and impassioned defences of free speech and freedom of the press. William Hayley's 1796 biography called him the ""greatest English author"", and he remains generally regarded ""as one of the preeminent writers in the English language"". Thomas Urquhart (1611–1660) translation of Rabelais' ""Gargantua and Pantagruel"" into English has been described as ""the greatest Scottish translation since Gavin Douglas's ""Eneados""""."
"the most highly regarded English poet of the Middle Ages, who was seen by his contemporaries as a successor to the great tradition of Virgil and Dante. The reputation of Chaucer's successors in the 15th century has suffered in comparison with him, though Lydgate and Skelton are widely studied. A group of Scottish writers arose who were formerly believed to be influenced by Chaucer. The rise of Scottish poetry began with the writing of ""The Kingis Quair"" by James I of Scotland. The main poets of this Scottish group were Robert Henryson, William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas. Henryson and Douglas"
"William McGonagall's poems ""The Tay Bridge Disaster"" and ""Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay"" and the German poet Theodor Fontane has mentioned the Tay in his poem ""Die Brück' am Tay"". Both poems deal will the Tay bridge disaster of 1879 seeing the bridge's construction as a case of human hubris and expressing an uneasiness towards the fast technological development of mankind. It is mentioned in the Steeleye Span song ""The Royal Forester"". Many Rolls-Royce civil aero-engines are named after British rivers, one of which is the Rolls-Royce Tay. River Tay The River Tay () is the longest river in"
"The Tay Bridge Disaster ""The Tay Bridge Disaster"" is a poem written in 1880 by the Scottish poet William McGonagall, who has been widely recognised as the worst poet in history. The poem recounts the events of the evening of December 28, 1879, when, during a severe gale, the Tay Rail Bridge at Dundee collapsed as a train was passing over it with the loss of all on board (now thought to be 75 people and not 90 as stated in the poem). The foundations of the bridge were not removed and are alongside the newer bridge. The poem is"
"John Constable, Joseph Wright of Derby, John Martin (""Landscape with a Castle""), J.M.W. Turner, Samuel Palmer, Ford Madox Brown, James McNeill Whistler ("")"". ""The Canterbury Tales"" and the novels ""Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded"" (Pamela Andrews, Mr B), ""The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle"" (Jack Hatchway, Commodore Trunnion), ""Tristram Shandy"", ""A Sentimental Journey"" (Parson Yorick), ""The Mill on the Floss"", ""Wuthering Heights"" (Catherine Earnshaw).<br> 16. A long poem in the style of William Blake, celebrating English poetry from Cædmon to Ernest Dowson.<br> 18. ""Le Morte d'Arthur"" (Fisher King, Merlin). T.S. Eliot Reaction to the novel was largely negative. Many critics found Ackroyd's"
"now too frail to walk the streets selling his poems, donations from friends, as ever, kept him afloat. He died penniless in 1902 and was buried in an unmarked grave in Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh. A grave-slab installed to his memory in 1999 is inscribed: Additionally, a plaque above 5 South College Street in Edinburgh shows an image of McGonagall, and bears the inscription: ""The Tay Bridge Disaster"" has been widely reproduced, and recounts the events of the evening of 28 December 1879, when, during a severe gale, the Tay Rail Bridge near Dundee collapsed as a train was passing"
"The Great McGonagall (film) The Great McGonagall is a 1974 British comedy film directed by Joseph McGrath and starring Spike Milligan in the title role, Peter Sellers as Queen Victoria and Julia Foster as Mrs McGonagall. It is a humorous biopic of the Scottish poet William McGonagall that includes several of McGonagall's actual poems, his appearing in the title role of ""Macbeth"" and his ""improvement"" of the Bard's plot, his pilgrimage to Balmoral Castle, the attempted assassination of Queen Victoria by Roderick McLean and a tribute to McGonagall from Lt Frederick Rollo of the Royal Scots in Zululand. On the"
"implied that ""disaster is befalling the house, and the household, of aristocratic (Calvinist, capitalist) New England, which has failed to pay its moral bills to the 'lower order,' its instruments."" Under the influence of Allen Tate and the New Critics at the beginning of his career, Lowell wrote rigorously formal and dense poetry that won him praise for his exceptionally powerful handling of meter and rhyme. ""Lord Weary's Castle"" epitomized this early style which was also notable for its frequently violent imagery. For instance, in ""The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket,"" the best-known poem from the book, Lowell wrote the following:"
"George Gilfillan, whose main claim to modern literary fame is his sponsorship of William McGonagall, allegedly the worst poet in British history. Other poetic references include Letitia Elizabeth Landon's ""Glencoe"" (1823), T. S. Eliot's ""Rannoch, by Glencoe"" and ""Two Poems from Glencoe"" by Douglas Stewart. The Glencoe Massacre is also referred to in George MacDonald's novel, Malcolm (though most of the plot occurs in the early 19th century). Examples of its appearance in literature include ""The Masks of Purpose"" by Eric Linklater, and the novels ""Fire Bringer"" by David Clement-Davies, ""Corrag"" by Susan Fletcher and ""Lady of the Glen"" by"
"Patrick"" (1872); and ""Legends of the Saxon Saints"" (1879); and in prose, ""Essays Chiefly on Poetry"" (1887); and ""Essays Chiefly Literary and Ethical"" (1889). He also wrote a picturesque volume of travel-sketches, and two dramas in verse, ""Alexander the Great"" (1874); and ""St Thomas of Canterbury"" (1876). According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, both of these dramas, ""though they contain fine passages, suffer from diffuseness and a lack of dramatic spirit."" One of his best remembered poem is ""Inisfail"" while two of his historical poems used to be on the Junior Cycle English syllabus, ""The March to Kinsale"" and"
"a live performance before the Queen. In July 1878, he walked from Dundee to Balmoral, a distance of about over mountainous terrain and through a violent thunderstorm to perform for Queen Victoria. When he arrived, he announced himself as ""The Queen's Poet"". The guards informed him ""You're not the Queen's poet! Tennyson is the Queen's poet!"" (Alfred Lord Tennyson was the poet laureate). McGonagall presented the letter but was refused entry and had to return home. Undeterred, his poetry writing continued, and he reported events to the newspapers, earning some minor recognition. Throughout his life McGonagall campaigned against excessive drinking,"
"kind in British history. Queen Victoria sent a message of condolence to the grieving families and contributed to the disaster fund. Donations sent from all over Britain totalled £5,000 and were used for the children's funerals and a memorial in Mowbray Park. The memorial, of a grieving mother holding a dead child, was later moved to Bishopwearmouth Cemetery where it gradually fell into disrepair and was vandalised. In 2002, the marble statue was restored at a cost of £63,000 and moved back to Mowbray Park with a protective canopy. The disaster inspired a poem by Scottish poet William McGonagall entitled"
"Mauberley"" and Eliot's ""The Waste Land"" marked a transition from the short imagistic poems that were typical of earlier modernist writing towards the writing of longer poems or poem-sequences. A number of long poems were also written during the 1920s, including Mina Loy's 'auto-mythology', ""Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose"" and Hugh MacDiarmid's satire on Scottish society, ""A Drunk Man Looks At The Thistle"". MacDiarmid wrote a number of long poems, including ""On a Raised Beach"", ""Three Hymns to Lenin"" and ""In Memoriam James Joyce"", in which he incorporated materials from science, linguistics, history and even found poems based on texts from"
"Augustan ""improvements"" to them. The greatest actor of the period, Edmund Kean, restored the tragic ending to ""King Lear""; Coleridge said that, “Seeing him act was like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.” Wales had its own Romantic movement, especially in Welsh literature (which was rarely translated or known outside Wales). The countryside and history of Wales exerted an influence on the Romantic imagination of Britons, especially in travel writings, and the poetry of Wordsworth. The ""poetry and bardic vision"" of Edward Williams (1747-1826), better known by his bardic name Iolo Morganwg, bear the hallmarks of Romanticism. ""His Romantic image"
"by gothic fiction and Dante Alighieri. As the poet's most famous works show, he is most interested in the extreme face of human existence such as hate, desperation or solitude. His drama, ""Nie-boska Komedia"" (The Un-Divine Comedy, 1833), portrays the tragedy of an old-world aristocracy defeated by a new order of communism and democracy, and is a poetic prophecy of class conflict and of Russia's October Revolution (see also ""Okopy Świętej Trójcy""). The work was paraphrased and expanded by Edward Robert, Lord Lytton, as ""Orval, the Fool of Time"" (1869). Krasiński's ""Agaj-Han"" (1834) is also well known in Poland. It"
"(1868), where he also has an essay on Walt Whitman. Buchanan also has a poem on David Gray, in ""Idyls and Legends of Inverburn"". Parts of """"The Luggie"""" have been narrated against a backdrop of the Luggie Water. The eponymous anthology is available and is out of copyright. David Gray's self penned epitaph was: Below lies one whose name was traced in sand- He died not knowing what it was to live: Died while the first sweet consciousness of manhood And maiden thought electrified his soul: Faint beatings in the calyx of the rose. Bewildered reader, pass without a sigh"