William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) was a novelist, of course — much faded from the esteem in which he was once held, back in the days that thought him second only to Dickens as an author of great Victorian novels. Still, his “Vanity Fair” is remembered, as are “The Luck of Barry Lyndon” and perhaps “The Newcomes.”

In those days, however, it was hard for writers not to dash off some poetry, if only because of the reading public’s knowledge of the art. And Thackeray’s occasional verse, scattered through his works, ended up running 235 pages when collected, after his death, in an 1869 volume called “Ballads and Tales.”

The most anthologized is probably “Vanitas Vanitatum,” but for a lighter Wednesday here at The New York Sun, it’s worth remembering “A Tragic Story,” his English reworking of “’s war einer, dem’s zu Herzen ging,” a comic song by the Greman polymath Adelbert von Chamisso (1781–1838). In stanzas mostly with a triple tetrameter rhyme, followed by a trimeter sting ending with “behind him,” the poem tells the tragic tale of a man who could not get his pigtail to hang in front, no matter how fast he twirled around.

A Tragic Story
by William Makepeace Thackeray

There lived a sage in days of yore
And he a handsome pigtail wore;
But wondered much and sorrowed more
    Because it hung behind him.

He mused upon this curious case,
And swore he’d change the pigtail’s place,
And have it hanging at his face,
    Not dangling there behind him.

Says he, “The mystery I’ve found, —
I’ll turn me round,” — he turned him round;
    But still it hung behind him.

Then round, and round, and out and in,
All day the puzzled sage did spin;
In vain — it mattered not a pin, —
    The pigtail hung behind him.

And right, and left, and round about,
And up, and down, and in, and out,
He turned; but still the pigtail stout
    Hung steadily behind him.

And though his efforts never slack,
And though he twist, and twirl, and tack,
Alas! still faithful to his back
    The pigtail hangs behind him.

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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.